Rawalpindi
\nPakistan punished poor catching from South Africa to accumulate 259-5 on the opening day of the second and final Test in Rawalpindi on Monday.
\nHad the tourists not dropped five catches on a turning pitch they would have been in a better position after Pakistan won the toss and batted.
\nSkipper Shan Masood, dropped on 71 off a luckless Keshav Maharaj, top-scored with 87 while Abdullah Shafique \u2014 dropped four times \u2014 made 57.
\nSaud Shakeel and Salman Agha will resume on Tuesday unbeaten on 42 and 10 respectively, with the home team seeking a 2-0 series win against the world Test champions.
\nSouth African pacer Kagiso Rabada trapped Mohammad Rizwan with the fifth delivery with the second new ball for 19 to give some respite to his team.
\nMaharaj, who missed the first Test in Lahore through injury, took 2-63 and fellow spinner Simon Harmer 2-75.
\nWith the bulk of the bowling done by Maharaj and Harmer, spinner Senuran Muthusamy \u2014 who took 11 wickets in the first Test \u2014 was surprisingly used for just four overs.
\nThe final session also saw Masood fall to an uppish sweep off Maharaj, caught by Marco Jansen, after hitting two fours and three sixes in his innings.
\nEarlier, Shafique\u2019s chancy knock finally ended when he edged Harmer to wicketkeeper Kyle Verreynne after adding an invaluable 111 runs for the second wicket with skipper Masood.
\nThe struggling Babar Azam, again cheered by a home crowd willing him to return to form, was dismissed for just 16 when Tony de Zorzi took a low catch at silly point for Maharaj\u2019s first wicket.
\nAzam has gone 29 Test innings without a century.
\nMaharaj himself dropped Shafique on 15 off his own bowling and then saw Aiden Markram drop the same batter on 41 and 53.
\nShafique also survived on nine when a Jansen delivery rolled onto the stumps but did not dislodge the bails.
\nShafique admitted he was lucky.
\n\u201cYou need luck in cricket and I was lucky today,\u201d said Shafique.
\nIn the morning session South Africa\u2019s only breakthrough came from Harmer, who bowled Imam-ul-Haq for 17 with a sharp turner that beat the bat and hit off-stump.
\nRabada was also unlucky when Tristan Stubbs dropped Shafique in the slips off the fourth ball of the match when he was on nought.
\n\u201cIt was an even day because we controlled their run rate,\u201d said Maharaj.
\n\u201cWe know how important are catches but no-one means to drop catches although it was frustrating.\u201d
\nHaving won the first Test in Lahore by 93 runs, Pakistan included a third spinner in Asif Afridi, dropping fast bowler Hasan Ali.
\nAt 38 years and 299 days, Asif became the second oldest Pakistani Test debutant, behind Miran Bakhsh, who made his debut at 47 years and 284 days against India in 1955.
\nTeams
\nPakistan: Shan Masood (captain), Abdullah Shafique, Imam-ul-Haq, Babar Azam, Saud Shakeel, Mohammad Rizwan, Salman Agha, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Noman Ali, Sajid Khan, Asif Afridi
\nSouth Africa: Aiden Markram (captain), Ryan Rickelton, Tony de Zorzi, Tristan Stubbs, Dewald Brevis, Kyle Verreynne, Marco Jansen, Simon Harmer, Keshav Maharaj, Senuran Muthusamy, Kagiso Rabada
\nUmpires: Chris Brown (NZL) and Sharfuddoula Saikat (BAN)
\nTV umpire: Rod Tucker (AUS)
\nMatch referee: Ranjan Madugalle (SRI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rawalpindi Pakistan punished poor catching from South Africa to accumulate 259-5 on the opening day of the second and final Test in Rawalpindi on Monday. Had the tourists not dropped five catches on a turning pitch they would have been in a better position after Pakistan won the toss and batted. Skipper Shan Masood, dropped …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":88439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88461,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88451\/revisions\/88461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}