Bowlers' graveyard

Completely insipid and lifeless pitches have ensured that a series which was eagerly looked forward to is ending up as one of the most boring, and a terrible advertisement for Test cricket. The bowlers from both teams have found little joy - not only have they not taken wickets, they have seldom even looked like making inroads.

A sporting pitch is one which is usually a good one for batting early on, and then progressively offers more assistance to the bowlers. The flatbed at Faisalabad, though, remained a batting beauty throughout, as is indicated by the high in-control percentage that the batsmen managed on all five days. Even on the last, despite the flurry of wickets towards the end, the bowlers induced false strokes from the batsmen only 13% of the time.

Among the bowlers, Shoaib Akhtar, with his ability to take the pitch out of the equation with his express speed, was the most effective, inducing 17% false shots, followed by Zaheer Khan and the impressive debutant Rudra Pratap Singh (16%). The spinners had a wretched time - Danish Kaneria had a not-in-control percentage of 13, while Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Shahid Afridi could only manage 11%.