Pakistan's Struggles in Rawalpindi Test Against Sri Lanka
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Under low, brooding clouds in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s top order walked straight into Kusal Mendis’ trap.
By lunch on the fifth and final day of the first Test, the hosts had crawled to 151-5, a lead of 139, their early optimism shredded by Sri Lanka’s sharp planning and disciplined seam bowling on a surface still offering plenty.
Mendis springs the trap
The morning began with Pakistan 57-1 and well-placed to build something substantial. Within minutes, that platform was gone.
Azan Awais, on 22 overnight, flashed at Lahiru Kumara’s very first ball of the day and nicked to the slips. From the other end, Asitha Fernando found just enough seam movement to kiss the outside edge of Mohammad Taha’s bat; he departed for 24 without adding a run. Two set batters gone, no runs added. Rawalpindi suddenly felt a lot bigger.
Into that pressure walked Babar Azam.
He looked, briefly, like the one man playing on a different pitch. Six boundaries, several of them those familiar, imperious cover drives that seem to slice the field in half. With Saud Shakeel digging in at the other end, the pair stitched together 50 valuable runs, dragging Pakistan away from the brink and back toward a position of control.
But Mendis had laid out his field like a puzzle, and Babar eventually solved it the wrong way.
Babar’s drought stretches on
The Pakistan captain rode his luck early. On 22, he offered a straightforward chance to second slip, only for Kamindu Mendis to spill it. An lbw appeal later went his way on umpire’s call. It felt like the kind of morning when fortune was nudging him toward the big score he has been chasing for far too long.
Instead, the pattern held. On 34, Babar fell exactly as Sri Lanka had planned it. With a packed leg-side cordon and a short backward square leg lurking, he picked out Lahiru Udara with a simple catch, sucked into the short-ball ploy and undone by the very trap Mendis had been baiting all session.
His wait for a Test hundred now stretches to 42 innings. For a player of his class, it is becoming a storyline of its own.
The pressure didn’t relent. On another overcast morning when the seamers were licking their lips, Sri Lanka stuck to their plans and Pakistan kept obliging.
Shakeel stands firm as Sri Lanka circle
Saud Shakeel took a brutal blow on the shoulder from Dilshan Madushanka, a thudding reminder of the hostility lurking in the pitch. He stayed down, then got up and dug in.
By lunch, he had crawled to an unbeaten 23 from 85 balls, an innings built on stubbornness more than fluency, but exactly what Pakistan needed. On a surface where every ball seemed to ask a question, his refusal to blink became the spine of the innings.
Alongside him, wicketkeeper-batter Ghazi Ghori inched to 7 not out, surviving a tense final half-hour before the interval as Sri Lanka hunted one more breakthrough to crack open the tail.
Shakeel had earlier overturned an lbw decision against him, using DRS to stay alive in an innings that has already spanned almost the entire session. It was a small moment, but in a match this delicately poised, survival itself felt like a statement.
Sri Lanka’s seamers keep Pakistan honest
With Saqib Khan’s superb seven-wicket debut having trimmed Sri Lanka’s first-innings lead to just 12, Pakistan started the day knowing a solid batting effort could tilt the Test decisively in their favor.
Sri Lanka refused to let that happen easily.
Kumara’s early strike set the tone. Fernando, with 2-20, probed relentlessly on a length that made every forward press feel risky. Milan Rathnayake, who finished the session with 2-32, joined the act after a brief 20-minute delay for bad light.
On resumption, he executed the short-ball plan to perfection against Salman Ali Agha. Another carefully constructed field, another baited hook shot, another wicket. Agha, who had scratched his way to 13, miscued, and Pasindu Sooriyabandara flung himself to complete a spectacular catch that underlined just how locked-in Sri Lanka’s fielding unit was to Mendis’ blueprint.
By the time the players walked off for lunch, Pakistan’s lead of 139 looked neither commanding nor negligible. It sat somewhere in the grey area where one session can decide everything.
The pitch is offering help, the clouds are hanging around, and both sides can still see a route to victory. The question now is simple: who holds their nerve longest in Rawalpindi’s final act?
