Cricket
Brydon Coverdale, Assistant editor, ESPNcricinfo 7y

Handscomb turns millimeter into an acre

Cricket, PAK tour of AUS 2016-17

The catch off a no-ball

Before he had scored a Test run, Peter Handscomb narrowly missed a pearler of a delivery from Vernon Philander that was perilously close to his outside edge. A few weeks later, after scoring his second Test century, Handscomb acknowledged that in a game of millimetres, he had been very lucky in that first innings. Now, another debut brought another stroke of fortune. Before getting off the mark, he slashed outside off and edged Junaid Khan to first slip. Again he was saved by millimetres: replays showed that Junaid had no-balled. He was away off the following delivery through a free hit. He went on to make 82.

The drop off a non-no-ball

Handscomb was really riding his luck this time. Later in the same spell from Junaid, Handscomb thrashed outside off and send a catch straight to point at stomach height. Mohammad Nawaz on as a substitute, spilled the straightforward chance and Handscomb had another reprieve, this time on 10. Technically, though, it was perhaps not a reprieve, for replays showed Junaid had overstepped again. But this no-ball was not checked by the third umpire, so the upshot was that Handscomb missed out on another free hit.

The record

When Babar Azam drove a single to mid-off to move to 47, he reached the milestone of 1000 runs in one-day international cricket. But this was not just any milestone. Azam had got there in his 21st innings, which meant that he had equalled the all-time record as the quickest to that landmark. The others to have done so in 21 innings are Viv Richards, Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott and Quinton de Kock.

The missed stumping

Matthew Wade has pulled his weight with the bat in this series - in the first match he became just the second Australian ever to score an ODI hundred from outside the top six - but his work with the gloves continued to be inconsistent. When Umar Akmal was new to the crease, he danced down the pitch to Travis Head for a wild slog, missed, and should have been stumped. But Wade failed to react and could not glove the ball, giving Akmal a reprieve when he was on 1. He made 39.

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