WATCH: Pakistan Executes A Brilliant Plan To Dismiss Australian Great Steve Smith

Cricket Image for WATCH: Pakistan Executes A Brilliant Plan To Dismiss Australian Great Steve Smith (Image Source: Twitter)

Pakistan vs Australia: Test matches and planned dismissals. Ah, sounds so good, and yet witnessing one is even better. Steve Smith, a world-class batter batting for his team to take the lead, and yet fails prey to excellent planning by Pakistan. 

Steve Smith scored 78 runs with 8 fours, in 196 balls to help his team Australia put up a fight against Pakistan's 476/5d. On the other side, a pitch where none of the bowlers could pick up more than a wicket each, including the likes of Cummins, Starc & Shaheen Afridi, Nauman had already picked up 3 wickets as he set his eyes on arguably Australia's best batter, Steve Smith. 

The 32-year old Australian was smacking the bowlers effortlessly through the off-side, using the room if and when provided to dispatch the ball for runs. This is when the Pakistan team came up with a tactic to deal with Smith's challenge. On the first step, the Pakistani bowlers bowled outside the leg stump to limit Steve Smith's freedom of scoring on the off-side.

To counter leg-side lines adapted by the Pakistani bowlers, Steve Smith switched to playing sweep shots, a convenient way to tackle the spinners. Moreover, Smith was playing these shots very fine to tackle the spin in a better way. 

Finally, Australia's 125th over of batting and Nauman Ali's 35th over of the bowling, Steve Smith fell to this tactic by the Pakistanis. Pakistan wicketkeeper, Mohammad Rizwan took a leg-side keeping stance. Nauman Ali consistently bowled down the leg side to make it difficult to score runs. Steve Smith tried normal fine sweep and reverse sweep but couldn't manage to get any runs. 

On the 5th delivery of the over, Steve Smith yet again went for a hard fine sweep shot but the ball took a faint edge, and Rizwan, who was already at the leg stump stance, took an excellent catch to dismiss the #3 ranked test batter in the world. 

BIG MOMENT. BIG WICKET. #BoysReadyHain l #PAKvAUS pic.twitter.com/96wVKGm4At

— Pakistan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) March 7, 2022

While talking about the match, Australia are at 449/7 at Stumps on day 3 in reply to Pakistan's 1st innings score of 476/4d, trailing by 27 runs. Earlier, Pakistan won the toss & opted to bat first in the 1st test. This match is being played at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, Rawalpindi.