Lunch New Zealand 519 for 6 (Williamson 137*, Sodhi 41*, Abrar 3-172) lead Pakistan 438 by 81 runs
Wasim played around with his field. At one point, he had a leg gully, a catching backward square leg, and two catching short midwickets for Sodhi. He went slightly round-arm, searching for the reverse-swinging yorker, but couldn’t get his length right, and Sodhi faced little trouble blocking those. One such delivery found Sodhi’s inside edge and thudded into his pads. Aleem Dar ignored the stifled appeal for lbw, but Babar Azam, more in hope than anything else, ended up burning Pakistan’s final review.
Williamson was sedate in the first 11 overs of the day, scoring just six runs off 29 balls before skipping down the ground to Abrar and punching him over his head for four. Later, around 30 minutes before the interval, he attempted a couple of reverse sweeps against Nauman Ali.
With little happening for the bowlers, Pakistan took the third new ball as soon as it became available. Mir Hamza produced a chance immediately, inducing an outside edge of Sodhi’s bat, but it flew for four through the vacant second-slip region. The one that carried to Sarfaraz Ahmed shortly afterwards, off the same bowler, no one seemed to notice. That was the second life for Sodhi – Sarfaraz had earlier dropped him down the leg side off Nauman.
With things moving almost on autopilot, New Zealand took their total past 500. At the moment, it looks they are happy to bat Pakistan out of the match.