NOTHING should be read into the resistance offered by Yousuf Youhana and Shoaib Akhtar. The result of this Test match will come on April Fool's Day.
But it will be a very unfunny prank played on Pakistan's supporters.
Thirteen Pakistani wickets fell for 250 runs on this batting paradise on Wednesday. Not one of them can be attributed to any quirk in the wicket. Asked to bat again, I have no doubt that India will make 675 again.
What frame of mind, what divine despair did Pakistan bring to the ground? The Pakistan batting was a house of cards. All it needed was a puff and it came down. The only consolation that can be taken from this dismal team display is that it can't get worse.
And if we are at all interested in learning any lessons, we need to look at the way Mohammad Sami and Shabbir Ahmed batted in the first innings and the gritty way Shoaib Akhtar supported Youhana and which has saved us from the indignity of losing by an innings inside four days.
Youhana was the boy on the burning deck, all but he had fled. It was a century made in a losing cause. It would be too rich to say that it restored our pride, that was beyond repair, but it confirmed what a good batting wicket it is.
Youhana knew that he was out of form, knew that he was, perhaps, unlucky in the first innings, but he took the opportunity to get back into form. This was not the best hundred he has scored but it was easily the most defiant. It was also an innings he played for his team. He too could have had flourish or two but he stayed focused but was severe on anything loose.
What are we to make of Inzamamul Haq's run out? It was entirely his fault. It was a sharp single and there was always danger but he seemed to be jogging. He should have been sprinting or better still refused the call for a single.
It was poor cricket. He should have known that he alone could have saved this Test match. He had been given out by an atrocious decision in the first innings and he had been batting with authority. He is Pakistan's in-form batsman, a run out was the last thing that Pakistan wanted.
But Pakistan's slide started off the first ball of the day, an effort-ball by Irfan Pathan that seemed to steeple and took Abdul Razzaq by surprise. He tried to fend it off and was caught behind.
Then Saqlain Mushtaq played a shot that is impossible to describe. No scribe could do justice to it but a cartoonist could. Shoaib hit a full toss straight back to Sachin Tendulkar and counting Moin Khan's wicket on Tuesday evening, Pakistan had lost four in 21 deliveries for seven runs.
Mohammad Sami and Shabbir Ahmed put on 36 runs and Pakistan was all out for 407. It was an incredible collapse for it showed that there was direction, no purpose to the batting, what to say of spine?
Any one who could have foretold what was to follow would have been denounced as a hopeless pessimist. Imran Farhat and Taufiq Umar batted out the seven overs to lunch. What the menu was for lunch, I do not know but there must have been something that induced a lack of application that weakened the resolve.
There seems to be no point in describing how the wickets fell though it must be noted that most of the batsmen appeared clueless against leg-spin, be it Anil Kumble's or Tendulkar's.
Considering that Amir Elahi, Intikhab Alam, Mushtaq Mohammad, Abdul Qadir and Mushtaq Ahmed have been in the Pakistan team, why was leg-spin being treated as if it was voodoo or some other black magic?
Pakistan must do more than re-group. Somehow, they have re-discover their self-belief. I haven't the faintest idea how this can be achieved. Leave alone bouncing back, there is real danger we could be facing a whitewash.
The team needs to be pulled up from the bootstraps and given a good shaking up, not by changing personnel but by changing attitudes. Was there no motivation? Is there a sense of shame that it so under-performed and in such a spectacular way?
Pakistan's cricket public is in a state of shock, not because the team lost but did so with any semblance of a fight, just came apart for no good reason. It was a day of cricket I would like to forget but this is not going to be easy unless, by some magic, it could be blanked out.
