Reluctant bails and Rahat's blooper

The zinger (Daniel Brettig)

It is a curio of cricket that a ball down the leg side can actually divert back towards the off. Misbah-ul-Haq had attempted to flick Josh Hazlewood , but the ball slid down his thigh pad to touch the leg stump on its way through. The zing bails and stumps lit up, the crowd roared and Hazlewood celebrated what would have been his second wicket. Only the contact was not sufficient to cause a bail to topple, similar to Ed Joyce's reprieve against UAE in Brisbane. The crowd's yells turned to puzzled murmuring, Hazlewood's elation to frustration and all were left to wonder whether normal bails would have sufficed.

The mow (Andy Zaltzman)

After their ritual bad start, Pakistan recovered to the competitive equilibrium of 80 for 2 with Haris Sohail and Misbah. Haris, normally a neat left-hander, decided the time was right to maul Watson over midwicket but the ball looped over backward point and fell fortuitously short of third man. Misbah spoke to Haris, presumably about not jettisoning the careful rebuild.

In Watson's next over, Haris tried a hook shot. It was the hook shot of a player who is not yet very good at hook shots, and probably should not play them at crucial stages of World Cup knockout matches. It struck his gloves and blooped over Haddin. Misbah appeared to have another stern word with his partner.

Surely now, after two lucky escapes, Haris would abandon his recklessness. To Watson's next ball, he plonked his foot outside the line of leg stump, and mowed the ball over mid-on for four. It was very much the shot of a man from a team who lost three well-set top seven batsmen to catches on the square-leg boundary, and three more to loose strokes outside off-stump.

The drop (Andy Zaltzman)

Wahab Riaz, in a spell of glorious fury, utterly defeated Shane Watson. Watson evaded with hurried recoils, fended without control, and was stripped of any certainty by Wahab's intense velocity. When Watson gave up evading and fending and hooked with fragile hope verging on desperation, the ball soared directly to the long leg fielder. Unfortunately for Wahab and Pakistan, whose victory prospects depended entirely on him, that long-leg fielder was Rahat Ali. Earlier in Wahab's spell, Rahat had caught David Warner at third man with an awkward stooping pouch that did not suggest a fielder with unshakeable confidence in his judgment of the parabolas of aerial objects. If anything, Rahat got into a better position for Watson's hook than for Warner's upper-cut. Nevertheless, he completely fluffed it. Australia might well still have won the match had he taken the catch. But the reaction of Rahat, Wahab and the rest of Pakistan's players suggested that they knew, having dropped it, they would now almost certainly lose.

The meander (Andrew Fidel Fernando)

Two overs after Steven Smith was dismissed, Wahab was back into the attack, attempting to turn a fast-fading game. His first ball to Maxwell is fearsome, and at the throat. Maxwell is in no position to duck or hook, so he played a sort of overhead smash. The ball looped high toward third man, but Sohail Khan chose an odd course to the ball. He veered left, then right, then left again, as the ball began its descent. In the end, he could only get fingertips to leather. Wahab keeled over in his followthrough, and the match spilled through Pakistan's hands.