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Pakistan cricket loves a teenage debutant. Pakistan especially loves a teenage pace bowler.
- Australia ended the day 1-302 after winning the toss and electing to bat
- David Warner 166, Marnus Labuschagne 126
- Rain interrupted play during the evening session
They emerge from somewhere and capture the imagination.
They're fast, fresh and new, made up entirely of potential and not yet any failure. The next thing you know, they're in the national team.
Some parts of Pakistani society are less than rigorous with recording birth dates: Shahid Afridi was claimed to be 16 when he made a one-day century in 37 balls, but in the years since has had as many ages as he's had retirements.
But whatever the exact age, Pakistani players get started young.
Javed Miandad, Ijaz Ahmed, Mushtaq Mohammad, and Saqlain Mushtaq were all 18 or younger.
Mohammad Amir was on the Lord's honours board and the Lord's dishonour board by that age.
The great fast-bowling trio of Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis all started Test cricket at school age, but they were the exceptions in going on to have long careers. Plenty of other young bowlers have vanished.
It wasn't really a surprise, then, that Pakistan's Test squad for the current Australian tour contained teenagers Naseem Shah and Muhammad Musa Khan.
It's also easy to forget that Shaheen Afridi is still 19 years old as well.
He's been around for long enough that he seems experienced, but he's only played five first-class games outside of his five Tests.
What was a surprise was selectors picking Naseem to debut in Brisbane alongside Shaheen and (a different) Imran Khan who is older but has barely played Test cricket through injury.
Naseem had some moments that showed his potential. He was consistently the fastest in the match, he bowled some zippy bouncers, beat the edge a few times and drew two nicks from David Warner.
Aside from that, he did what a teenager in his first Test match was likely to do: bowled too short and got whacked around.
Also predictably, he ended up sore after the match and couldn't back it up for the second Test.
The only other option in the squad was the other teenager, Musa.
When Pakistan drafted him in, Musa was only ever likely to make the same mistakes. It's easier to bowl short than full.
Bowling short feels aggressive and makes the bowler feel assertive. It feels less risky than bowling full. And it's a lot easier to land that ball than a perfect midway length.
Sure enough, that's what happened. Musa bowled short outside off stump all day while Warner did things like uppercut him over gully and conventionally cut him squarer.
By day's end, Musa's 13 overs had gone at close to a run a ball.
In neither case was the selection likely to have been a success, but dividing the two Tests between two players only makes it less effective.
It gives no chance for either bowler to learn or redeem themselves from a bad first outing, and leaves them stewing indefinitely on that one match.
For teams wanting a young talent to play, the best time is either in a match that you should definitely win, when the quality of player around them can carry them through, or a match where you have almost no chance of winning so it doesn't matter, and it's worth getting the player the experience.
Maybe Pakistan's management does see an Australian tour this way, but there's little obvious benefit to their young bowlers experiencing one bad match and then potentially not playing for months or even years.
The accuracy was what really mattered. Warner started carefully against the one experienced bowler, Mohammad Abbas. As soon as Musa appeared on the scene, so did short wide balls to slash away.
When Warner was on 99, Pakistan managed to raise the tension. The off-side field was packed: mid off, two covers, point, gully slip, then three on the leg side. Fine leg was up, everyone saving a single.
That relied on a bowler having the accuracy to stay outside the off stump six balls in a row. Abbas duly delivered. The young bowlers would surely have offered up a few gifts.
All Warner had to do was wait for mistakes. And they duly arrived.
In between times, he ran sharply with Marnus Labuschagne to find singles where others might not have looked.
"I think it's quite fitting that David Warner has brought up his hundred with a cheeky single," said Jason Gillespie on ABC radio.
Meanwhile, the batsman was celebrating it without his bat, having dropped it while hustling for his hundredth run.
Later that night, after stumps had been called and the ground emptied, the parks around Adelaide were quietly alive.
Insects called out; the earlier rain made the air pleasantly cool.
It was a city-wide calm, the opposite of what Musa must have been feeling earlier when the blood was rushing in his ears.
It was hard to imagine that both could have existed in the same city on the same day.
The achievement of playing a Test match can't be taken away from him.
But watching Musa get smacked around the Adelaide Oval on that first day, it was hard to see the value.
A team was effectively a bowler down, a player was enduring a chastening experience with no chance to fix it next time.
Having a teenage debutant is great for the story. Turns out it's a little less great in practice.
Topics: cricket, sport, adelaide-5000, sa, australia, pakistan
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