The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

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Cricket
Steve Smith shines as Australia and Pakistan
head towards soggy draw
Australia 465-6 in replay to Pakistan’s 443-9 after day four at the MCG
Steve Smith hundred lights up Melbourne before the rain comes again
Australian captain Steve Smith salutes what remained of the MCG crowd after reaching his century
on day four of the Boxing Day Test against Pakistan in Melbourne. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP
Not for the first time in a Test career now well set in a period of sustained brilliance, Australian
captain Steve Smith’s timing was impeccable on day four of the Melbourne Test. No sooner had the
Australian captain driven through cover to bring up his 17th Test century than umpires Ravi and
Gould stopped play for a monsoonal downpour, which struck at 2.50pm at the MCG and did not clear.
For the rest of the day’s play the sun fried but never entirely frazzled the Pakistan attack, among whom
only Mohammad Amir went without some kind of reward in between being clobbered to all parts by
Smith, Peter Handscomb and, ever so briefly, their much-maligned team-mate Nic Maddinson.
The latter pair provided an interesting study in contrasts. Both came into this side two games ago as
greenhorns on equal footing, but now look like members of entirely different species. Maddinson’s 22
was by a factor of four his highest Test score so far but again ended with an error of judgement and
technique when he charged leg-spinner Yasir Shah and missed, making the type of delivery his
colleagues had hammered look like Shane Warne’s Gatting ball.
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