DAWN.COM's Hafsa Adil covers the Pakistan-Australia series live from Dubai.

Despite some last-minute technical glitches, I was able to get my computer up and running in time for the first ODI in the state-of-the-art media box that overlooks the Dubai Sports City Cricket Stadium. While the organisers were trying to control the chaos before the ‘showpiece’ event, the media men and women were busy scrutinizing the facilities and the view from their vantage point.

Even with a late start, most of the stands were empty when the first innings kicked off but once the sun set and Afridi led the Aussie collapse, Pakistani fans swarmed the stadium. A bunch of Aussie spectators next to the photographers’ area made their presence felt but the sheer number of green shirts and the short stints of their batsmen at the pitch were enough to limit their ‘Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!’ chants.

The fact that Pakistan got off to a winning start in their first post-Lahore series came as a relief to not just the Pakistani team and officials but to a number of other stakeholders as well. A chance elevator ride with ICC President David Morgan revealed the ICC’s expectations from the series and the DSCC stadium as a possible ‘home venue’ for Pakistan. ‘It will be interesting to see how the Pakistanis bat on this pitch and adapt to the overall conditions in Dubai. It will help the ICC and it will help Pakistan cricket,’ said the ICC head, who had earlier said that the governing body does not want to leave Pakistan out in the cold even though it did decide to leave Pakistan out of the 2011 World Cup.

In the end, it all worked out well for Pakistan, despite the best efforts of the batsmen to take the match to the last ball that evoked comments like ‘yaar, aik do ultay seedhay maar aur match mukaa’ from the media box.