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Your support makes all the difference.The England selectors asked Durham's Simon Brown to play this game but then didn't venture north to watch him. The Pakistan selectors thought England in general had already seen far too much of Waqar Younis and Mushtaq Ahmed and so kindly rested them. But Durham quickly rued their replacements, Shahid Nazir and Saqlain Mushtaq. Both teenagers took three wickets and neither would look out of place in the Test team.
Durham's openers, Sherwin Campbell and Stewart Hutton, had easily seen off current Test bowlers Ata-ur-Rehman and Wasim Akram, although Wasim was only lolloping in off nine gentle paces. A series of drives, hooks and cuts took Durham, who cannot beat county sides but traditionally prosper against tourists, to the surprising comfort of 62 for 0 off 16 overs.
On came 18-year-old Shahid, a fast bowler playing his third game of the tour. He dropped his first ball short, Campbell's eyes lit up, but the hook dropped down long leg's throat. In Shahid's second over, Hutton inexplicably let the ball swing between his bat and pad and was bowled. John Morris poked and prodded at 27 balls before the youngster snicked the edge.
Three wickets in 26 balls was enough for Shahid and he left the field. He reappeared after lunch wearing a sort of corset but when Mike Roseberry and Jimmy Daley found themselves at the same end of the pitch, his wild throw from the deep let them off the hook and Wasim pointedly advised the prodigy to retire to the pavilion once more.
Roseberry and Daley consolidated but never comfortably against the controlled off-spin of 19-year-old Saqlain, yet it was Wasim who did the damage - physically. Stepping up a gear, he struck Roseberry's finger and forced him to retire, terrorised Robin Weston (his first innings of the season lasted three balls) and intimidated Daley into deflecting to the wicketkeeper.
Saqlain held off his colleagues to take a skied top edge catch off Brown before the last man in, Neil Killeen, clubbed 20 off an over from the Pakistani captain, one blow falling inches short of Saqlain which meant the youngster, like Shahid, felt the full wrath of Wasim. Yet Wasim yorked his revenge leaving the recovered Roseberry stranded on 93, 10 of which were overthrows.
David Ligertwood did England's selectors the biggest favour, though, when he thrashed the ball into Inzamam-ul-Haq's right shin and the master batsman limped off to put his feet up.
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