On the first two days in Brisbane, Pakistan watched Australia pile up runs, then suffered a pile-up of their own. The road of a pitch was safe enough during the daylight hours, oncoming traffic easy to see. But as dusk and then evening arrived and the pink ball swung under lights, carnage ensued. Pakistan's batsmen crashed and burned on Sunset Boulevard.
So, when the third evening arrived and Australia declared at the dinner break, nobody knew quite what to expect. Could the match be over tonight? Would Younis Khan, the ageing star of yesteryear, be "ready for his close-up"? Or were there genuinely starring roles still in his future? By stumps he had at least completed an entertaining cameo, with more to come.
To look at the scorecard from the final session of play would tell you nothing of the gripping contest that it was. Pakistan batted for two-and-a-half hours and made 2 for 70. One-sixth of their runs came in a single over, the antepenultimate of the evening, as Jackson Bird served up three half-volleys that Azhar Ali dispatched through cover for boundaries.
The rest of the session was a good old-fashioned Test battle, insofar as pink-ball Test cricket under lights can be called old-fashioned. Standard & Poor's rates Australia's economy AAA with a negative outlook; here Australian cricket's economy earned a AAA rating with a positive outlook. They will win this Test, it is just a matter of when.
There were more dots than in a dictionary of Morse code. Josh Hazlewood bowled 66 deliveries from which only three runs were scored: a pair of singles from Azhar and a three driven past mid-on by Babar Azam. Among the big crowd of 20,915 would have been countless children - it wasn't a school night - raised on the BBL. There, dot balls are cheered, so they must have loved the 166 Australia bowled tonight.
Australia's discipline was hard to fault, but Pakistan's too was a great improvement from the second evening. Sami Aslam's concentration was impeccable, until a piece of rubbish flew across the ground at the Vulture Street End, right behind Mitchell Starc, who was steaming in to bowl. Perhaps it snapped Aslam's focus, maybe he should have pulled out. Instead, he drove outside off and edged to slip.
But if garbage flew across the outfield, none was delivered by Australia's bowlers. They built and built and built the pressure, and Aslam's lapse came during a string of six consecutive maidens. Would it spark the kind of chaos that came the previous evening, when Pakistan lost 8 for 61 in 30 overs? Not this time.
"Azhar will just sleep on that pitch," Waqar Younis said while commentating on radio, and indeed a few fans might have done so in the crowd while watching him bat. Only two months ago, Azhar batted for nearly 11 hours in a Test innings against West Indies in Dubai, also against a pink ball, and scored a triple-century. Had Misbah-ul-Haq not declared he would probably still be batting.
So it was that Azhar learnt from his first-innings error of poking half-heartedly outside off. On the rare occasion when his concentration waned in the second innings - as when he pushed at a Hazlewood delivery that whizzed past the edge - he visibly chastised himself. Otherwise, Azhar bedded down for the night.
If his lack of strokeplay allowed the crowd's attention to wander, Nathan Lyon snapped them back out of it. Such has been the adoration of the Brisbane crowd for Lyon this Test that you'd think he was a born-and-bred maroon, not a cockroach from south of the border. Why? Perhaps his underdog status played a part, for Lyon was perilously close to being dropped for this Test.
At stumps Usman Khawaja, the Queensland captain, joked that Lyon had become Queensland's favourite son. So you can imagine the roars when Lyon struck, and Babar Azam edged his straight ball to slip. Adelaide Oval is Lyon's most productive Test venue, but the Gabba might quickly have become his favourite.
Perhaps the only man happy to see Babar fall to Lyon might have been Younis, for it meant that he walked to the crease on a king pair facing a spinner, not a fast bowler. Last time Australia saw Younis in Tests he scored 106, 103*, 213 and 46 against them in the UAE in 2014. By stumps here he had 0 from 19 balls, but it was every bit as riveting as any of those hundreds.
Younis faced up to Lyon with two leg slips, short leg, and one slip. Australia tried to apply pressure, but Younis can handle offspinners in his sleep. When he faced Hazlewood the battle truly began. A bouncer was fended away in front of his eyes, a yorker kept out by a bat slammed on the pitch. Every ball seemed to pose a threat.
Younis has nearly 10,000 Test runs, but here was battling for survival as had the rookie Nic Maddinson earlier in the day. Never in 113 Tests has Younis scored a pair, but the run he sought did not come tonight. And yet he survived. Hazlewood had 15 deliveries at Younis: every one was a dot, and with every one Hazlewood's frustration grew.
It was rousing Test cricket, and both teams should have been proud of their work in that final session. Australia's bowlers offered nothing, until Bird's half-volleys. Pakistan's batsmen learnt from their errors and focused on getting through the night, much as Khawaja and Matt Renshaw had for Australia during a challenging floodlit session in Adelaide.
On the third evening, Pakistan crawled along Sunset Boulevard. There were a couple of fender benders but no major accidents, and certainly no speeding fines. A long two-day journey awaits if they are to avoid defeat in this Test, and many obstacles will be in their path. But for now, at least they reached their waypoint.