BULAWAYO: Rookie opener Tinotenda Mawoyo continued his slow march at the
crease on Friday as Zimbabwe reached 314-5 at lunch on the second day
of the one-off Test against Pakistan at Queens Sports Club.Mawoyo has been dug in now for eight hours and 22 minutes altogether, reaching his first Test century after facing 327 balls.At lunch, with 362 balls behind him and in partnership with debutant Greg Lamb he moved on to 117 runs.Mawoyo
had some luck along the way. He was dropped on the boundary on Thursday
by Sohail Khan when on 25. And with an extraordinary piece of good
fortune when on 98 he went down the wicket to Saeed Ajmal, missed the
ball and saw Akmal fumble to miss an easy stumping.The Zimbabwean then faced 16 balls on 99 before crossing the line.Even
that was an incident. He got a thin edge to Ajmal and ran what he
thought would be a leg bye. The celebrations came when umpire Ian Gould
made no signal.Craig Ervine struggled when resuming on 38 and he
was caught and bowled by Juniad as he tried to hit over the slips but
caught the shoulder of the bat.However, he had put on 94 runs for the fifth wicket with Mawoyo, priceless from Zimbabwe’s viewpoint.The
Pakistanis tried everything they could to break through under the
desperate captaincy of Misbah ul Haq but they secured only Ervine’s
wicket during the session.They urgently need one more wicket
after the break to get into the tail. If they fail to do that quickly
Zimbabwe will be heading for a much better score than they or anybody
else expected.
