Nine hundred seconds of history

The Pakistan board decided to start the Karachi Test at 10:00am local time unlike at Lahore and Faisalabad, when the game had started 15 minutes earlier. The reason given for the advanced starts: to compensate for the fading light which may stop play before schedule.

The official reason put forward by PCB was that Karachi would have enough sunshine till late in the evening for 90 overs to go through in a day's play.

The rumour mills, though, began working over-time and there were some suggestions that the move was prompted to delay the start by as much time as possible so that the fast bowlers would be denied early help. The green look of the pitch, some apparently felt, besides the cool winds blowing from across the sea, could be of great assistance to quicker men early in the day.

What foresight! Had Irfan Pathan bowled his first delivery of the Test at 9:45am who knows what a mess he might have created. With all the skullduggery, he still managed to snaffle three wickets in the first six minutes.

With 900 extra seconds, more millimeters of dew on the pitch, and a faster wind speed he could have easily sliced through the whole line-up, maybe even twice. Surely then one could have had a chance to see the first-ever first over double hat-trick in Tests.

And the match would have undoubtably finished around noon on the first day, well before the fading light caused any problems.