Published: 11:25 AM, 04 June 2026
Nathan Ellis shines as Australia beats Pakistan to level ODI series
Fast bowler Nathan Ellis grabbed a career-best 4-33 on yet another tricky wicket and led Australia to a series-levelling 41-run win over Pakistan on Tuesday in the second one-day international.
Pakistan, which won the first game by five wickets on a turning wicket, was bowled out for 190 after Australia had scored 231-9 on a pitch that had plenty of turn for the spinners and variable bounce for the seam bowlers.
"It's definitely different to the traditional one-day cricket we see around the world at the moment," Ellis said in reference to Pakistan's ploy to make rank-turners for the series against an understrength Australia.
"It's no secret that today it was pretty low and slow… we saw the cutters and the slow balls working a lot today, and the ball started to tail and reverse swing through the 35-to-45-over mark."
Half-centuries from captain Josh Inglis (51) and Cameron Green (53) were supported by Matthew Renshaw's run-a-ball 43, while 19-year-old Oliver Peake added 31 off 32 balls after Pakistan captain Shaheen Shah Afridi won the toss and elected to field.
Left-arm spinner Arafat Minhas, who became the first Pakistani bowler to take five wickets in his debut ODI at Rawalpindi last Saturday, returned figures of 2-27.
Leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed had 2-34, while the pace duo of captain Afridi (3-36) and HarisRauf (2-49) shared five wickets between them.
All-rounder Shadab Khan scored 71 off 104 balls to make amends for his wicketless return of 0-56 and took the Pakistan chase deep before he was the last man dismissed - stumped down the legside by Inglis off leg-spinner TanveerSangha.
Ellis struck in his first over when MaazSadaqat played the ball back onto his stumps, and then the fast bowler had Babar Azam (16) lbw off a delivery that nipped sharply into Pakistan's premier batter in the fifth over.
Pakistan's middle-order struggled to cope with the spin of Matthew Short (3-36) and slumped to 78-6 before Shadab and Minhas (33) revived the chase with a 59-run partnership.
But Ellis broke the stand when he had Minhas trapped lbw in the 32nd over. Shadab got to his fifth half-century in ODIs and struck two sixes against Green.
The series concludes on Thursday at the same venue.
"It was a pretty good total in the end," Inglis said. "It would have been nice for someone to go on and get a big score, but … we thought anything over 200, we were right in the game.
"You can always call on Nello (Ellis) on those sorts of pitches; his variations are outstanding, and when you've got on-pace at 145 and then your slow balls at just over 100k an hour, it's really tough."
The slowness of the wicket was evident after Alex Carey had dragged Afridi's first ball of the match back onto his stumps, and the Pakistan skipper didn't hesitate to introduce his two best spinners - Minhas and Abrar - from both ends inside the PowerPlay.
Abrar had an early success when he found the leading edge of Short's bat for a comfortable return catch, and MarnusLabuschagne once again failed to bat on turning tracks when he top-edged a sweep against Minhas and fell for 5.
>>AP
