Pakistan and Australia have been playing international cricket against each other since 1956 and it would not be wrong to say that Australia’s weight in these competitions as a whole has been heavy.
It is also a fact that Pakistan had defeated Australia by 9 wickets in a Test against Australia in Karachi in 1956. But Pakistan has yet to win a series against Australia on Australian soil. On the contrary, in the series played in Pakistan, Pakistan has been taking the lead over Australia, but the Australian team has been beating Pakistan in Pakistan as well.
The competition between the two teams has always been hard. It is also important to mention that when the Australian team visited Pakistan 24 years ago in 1998, they won the three-match series 0-1. Defeated
In 1956, the Australian team lost badly to England in the Ashes series and came to Pakistan where they had to play only one Test match in Karachi in which Pakistan won by 9 wickets.
In this match, the Australian players were bowled out for 80 runs in front of the devastating bowling of Fazal Mahmood on the meeting wicket of Karachi. Pakistan scored 199 in reply with Wazir Muhammad scoring 67 and captain Hafeez Kardar 69.12 wickets taken by Fazal Mahmood in the match.
After this match, the Australian team came to Pakistan in 1959 under the leadership of Richie Benoit. This time the Australian team won the Test series. The highlight of the series was that on the fourth day of the match played in Karachi, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower also came to watch the match with Pakistani President Ayub Khan.
Then in 1964, the Australian team came to Pakistan to play a test match. The match played in Karachi was drawn. In this match Pakistani batsman Khalid Ibadullah scored 164 runs and the first Sindhi-speaking player of the national team Abdul Qadir was also present in this match who was run out after scoring 95 runs. Australian captain Bobby Simpson scored centuries in both innings of this match.
In both the 1956 and 1959 Tests I saw myself sitting on the hills of the National Stadium, I was a college student at the time and there were no stands for spectators in the stadium then.
Pakistan Australia match played in Australia
This is what happened in the early Pak-Australia cricket matches played in Pakistan, now let’s talk a little about the matches played in Australia.
The Pakistani team first toured Australia in 1964. Only one Test match was to be played in this tour. The match played at Melbourne Cricket Ground, ended in a draw.
The highlight of the match was the batting of Pakistan captain Hanif Mohammad. He scored an unbeaten 101 in the first innings and 93 in the second innings. He was wrongly stumped out in the second innings and missed out on a second century.
A memorable performance in the Pakistan-Australia cricket match was also the bowling of Pakistani fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz during the 1979-1978 tour. In the first match of this tour played in Melbourne, they gave victory to Pakistan by 71 runs.
He took 11 wickets in the entire match, taking 2 wickets in the first innings and 9 wickets for 86 runs in the second innings. On the last day of the match, when Australia needed 77 runs to win, Sarfraz Nawaz took the last 7 wickets by giving only one run. In this match, Majid Khan scored 108 and Australian Alan Border scored 105 runs.
But this was not Pakistan’s first victory in Test cricket on Australian soil. Pakistan won the first Test on Australian soil during the 1976-1777 series. The visiting Pakistani team led by Mushtaq Mohammad won the third Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground and tied the three-match series.
The highlight of this test was the successful bowling of Pakistani bowler Imran Khan. He took 12 wickets in this Test and from there he became a cricket star. Asif Iqbal also scored 120 runs in this test. This was Pakistan’s first victory in Test cricket on Australian soil but after many years and after playing many series, Pakistan could not win any Test series against Australia.
Since then, the national team has played Test matches against Australia in the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, and England. Pakistan had to play matches in these countries due to various reasons, one of which was the security situation.
Australia’s visit to Pakistan in 1998
Now let’s talk about the last visit to Australia before the recent visit to Pakistan. The Australian team had toured Pakistan in 1998 under the captaincy of Mark Taylor and the series was won by the visiting team 0-1.
Like the previous Test series, I covered this series. Australia won the Test in Rawalpindi by an innings and 99 runs. Saeed Anwar scored 145, Michael Slater 108, and Steve Waugh 157 while Darren Lehmann was dismissed for 98.
The second Test was played at the Arbab Niaz Stadium in Peshawar and ended in a draw. Australia captain Mark Taylor scored a triple century and scored 334 runs and remained unbeaten. He scored 92 in the second innings. Justin Langer scored 116 and Ricky Ponting 76 in this match.
For Pakistan, Ijaz Ahmed scored 155 and Saeed Anwar 126 runs. However, the match was drawn due to the triple century of the Australian captain. When the Australian captain was asked why he declared his innings before surpassing Sir Don Bradman’s record, he replied that he did not want to cross Bradman’s 334 because Bradman had been in his eyes since childhood. Respect has been.
The last match played in Karachi in this series was also equal. In this Test match, Shahid Afridi made his Test debut and also took 5 wickets. Mark Waugh and Michael Slater scored 96 runs while for Pakistan Amir Sohail took 133, Ijaz Ahmed 120, and Glenn McGrath 5 wickets. During this tour, Australia also won all three ODIs along with the Test series.
This was the record of the last Pakistan-Australia series 23 years ago, after which Australia either played a home series with Pakistan or played a match in the United Arab Emirates and England.
Some interesting facts about the 1998 Pakistan Australia series
An interesting incident took place in the match in Peshawar. When Mark Taylor declared the innings after scoring 334 runs, a Pakistani journalist reported that the match was over. Mark Taylor declared the innings in honor of Don Bradman.
After the news broke, when the Karachi Test was held, the manager of the Australian team came to the press box in a state of rage and fired at the Pakistani journalist. Now the journalist did not have any evidence anyway so he listened to everything helplessly.
What happened was that Sachin Bajaj, an Indian national, was also present in the Peshawar Test. Sachin Bajaj was my friend, he has written 4, 5 books on cricket but Pakistani journalists did not know about it. When Australia visited India before the tour of Pakistan, Sachin Bajaj was appointed as the Liaison Officer of the Australian team by the Indian Cricket Board. The Pakistani journalist thought that this was a bucky and because of this, the match was staked. Due to what happened, there was a lot of commotion in the press box of Karachi Stadium.
Similarly, during the Peshawar match, Jim Maxwell and I were commenting that eagles were seen flying in the sky. Seeing them, he said in English, what beautiful birds, what a great flight. I immediately said yes it is a beautiful flight but the most important flight from Peshawar was the American plane U2 which was shot down by the Russians. Upon hearing this, Jim Maxwell immediately said, “Oh no! Are you that old? ‘I replied,’ Yes, I am that old. ‘
During this time, foreigners and journalists were not allowed to go to Khyber and they were not allowed to go there. But I took about 12 foreign journalists to Khyber with the special permission of the government of Northwest Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). There is a huge Frontier Force mess where the Frontier Force, due to my knowledge, also invited these foreign journalists to its mess. But the invitation blew the minds of the journalists just by looking at the museum there. However, it was a great experience.
Now the Australian team is in Pakistan again. The current Pakistan and Australia squads are no longer Chapel Brothers, Dennis Lilly, Jeff Thompson, Alan Border, Shane Warren, Wa Brothers, Glenn McGrath, Hanif Mohammad, Azhar Abbas, and Mushtaq. Muhammad, Majid Khan, neither Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Abdul Qadir, and Inzamam-ul-Haq, nor Saeed Anwar and Wasim Bari, nor Wasim Akram or Waqar Younis. But even then, the competition will be fierce. The Pakistani team, like other teams, can play well on home soil.
After the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009, foreign teams stopped coming to Pakistan. However, after the improvement in the situation, the foreign teams are now touring Pakistan again and the visit of the Australian team to Pakistan is an important milestone in the journey of the revival of international cricket in Pakistan.
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