Zampa's wiles, and Maxwell's orthodox six

The edge's sweet spot
Had the first over been decided by boxing judges, Mohammad Amir would have been awarded Usman Khawaja's wicket on points. Beating the bat and finding Khawaja's footwork lacking, Amir was able to expose the opener in ways no bowler has managed since the start of the Australian Test summer. There was to be a cruel twist to the over also, when Amir straightened his line and turned Khawaja front on with some more late movement. An edge was procured, but it scuttled through cover and skated away to the boundary rope. Seldom will there be better advertisement for the fact that bats now have extra sweet spots on their edges.

The tee-off
So often Glenn Maxwell tries the exotic that it is possible to forget that he has a perfectly good repertoire of orthodox strokes. After one attempted reverse sweep flew off a top edge over his head to the boundary, Maxwell seemed to make a momentary resolution about playing more correctly. The results were noticeable, typified by one magnificent lofted off drive off Mohammad Sami that might easily have been played by a right-handed Khawaja. Maxwell held his pose and pondered life as a traditional strokeplayer for a moment, before resuming his usual out there fare.

The lateral movement
In the second innings of the Ashes Test at Lord's last year, England tried to restrict Steven Smith by bowling well wide of off stump with an off-side field. Smith's response was to move wider and wider and still flick to leg with impunity. Wahab Riaz and Shahid Afridi had clearly not made note of this footage, though they did at least take Smith to a new extreme. Taking guard outside off stump, Smith left all three stumps for Wahab to aim at. But instead of attacking them, Wahab followed Smith, leaving the batsman to flick over the scantily patrolled leg side field for a boundary from a position beyond the return crease.

The steady nerve
Adam Zampa responded well to being struck for six against Bangladesh, but the figure of Afridi in a match Australia had to win was rather a step-up in pressure. When Afridi sallied forth to deposit Zampa well beyond the boundary, the crowd at the PCA Stadium created the sort of din to make a legspinner question his choice of occupation. But Zampa was unbowed, and his next offering - a quicker, wider ball, perhaps with a hint of knowledge that Afridi was charging again, resulted in a stumping that effectively sealed the match. Zampa may not turn the ball an enormous amount, but his brain and character are weapons to be reckoned with.