Wildly fluctuating day was pure Pakistan

If there is an enduring characteristic of Pakistan's Test cricket team, it is surely their unsurprising capacity to surprise.

Over the course of a compelling six and a bit hours of a traditional multi-season Melbourne day, Shan Masood's men looked to have thrown away the second NRMA Insurance Test only to roar back and fleetingly snatch equal favouritism before finally and inexplicably allowing it to slip.

As ever with the quicksilver outfit that at once can seem indomitable and comical, the mere scoreboard statistics can't capture the oscillations that landed Pakistan in a position from where an outright win now seems a downright challenge.

Resuming this morning at 6-194 – 124 runs adrift of Australia's hard-fought first innings – the tourists lifted their total to within 54 of their rivals before allowing the margin to blow out to 241 by day's end, requiring a further four wickets before they launch their pursuit.

"I think if we were all out now, we'd feel very much in the game," said Australia allrounder Mitchell Marsh after falling four runs short of what would have been a much-deserved maiden Boxing Day century.

"It's a great cricket wicket. We're now deep into the third innings and yet bowlers are still massively in the game.

"It bodes well for us if we can get a few more runs with our bowlers, then get into them.

"There's still enough seam movement, certainly with the new ball.

'It sort of died off a little bit around the 35-over mark I thought, but there was still enough in it."

What Marsh's matter-of-fact precis didn't address was the couple of unlikely tail-end batting efforts that carried Pakistan close to parity, some new-ball bowling the equal of anything Australia have faced on home turf over the past decade, and slipshod fielding efforts that ultimately defined the day.

Perhaps most pertinently, for a Pakistan team that claimed to be at full strength in the batting division while the bowling was minus a few headliners (most notably express quick Naseem Shah who has a shoulder injury), it's been the latter cohort who have carried the heavier load on this tour.

That was certainly the case the day when Pakistan's four-pronged pace attack did more than expected with the bat and then over-delivered with the ball to have Australia on the ropes before the batters again let them down, only this time in the field.

Abdullah Shafique's dropped catch off Marsh when he was on 20 and his team 4-46 became the focal point because of the runs it cost (76 for Marsh alone) and the momentum it robbed, but there were other mis-steps that ensured Pakistan stumbled just as they were beginning to strut.

The delivery after Shafique's glaring miss, Masood himself failed to cleanly arrest a firmly struck off-drive from Marsh that – in a reprise of the emblematic first ball of this series in Perth – bounced from his grasp and rolled to the mid-off boundary.

The message that telegraphed was unmissable, and more misfields soon followed.

There was the Keystone Cops routine between mid-on and mid-off fielders who near tripped over themselves trying to stop a Marsh straight drive, only for neither to lay a paw on the ball.

Even the usually immaculate Rizwan struggled to glove one that bounced before him and bobbled away for a bonus run to add to the 40 additional byes and wides already racked up by Pakistan in this match.

But amid that mild farce there shone inspired new-ball spells from Shaheen Shah Afridi (3-58) and Mir Hamza (3-27) that might have put their team on the cusp of a remarkable come-from-behind win if not for the subsequent blemishes.

The 20 minutes of peerless pace bowling the duo produced either side of lunch, as Australia plumbed rarely-visited depths to reach 4-16, was as electrifying as it was unforeseen.

The MCG has born witness to similarly seismic top-order batting implosions in its recent past but, true to its reputation as a sporting coliseum, they have involved touring teams being feasted upon by a voracious Australia attack.

In 2012, it was the contrasting double-act of Mitchell Johnson and Jackson Bird that reduced Sri Lanka's second innings to 4-13 with a withering opening spell that was kick-started by a first-over run out.

And the legend that has become the Boxing Day Test was effectively forged on that rollicking late evening in 1981 when Dennis Lillee enshrined himself in the national consciousness by tearing in from what is now the Shane Warne Stand to leave the then-invincible West Indies 4-10.

But not since the opening morning of the second Ashes Test of the 1911-12 summer have the local lads been similarly humbled, as England's S.F Barnes sent back Australia's top four – Warren Bardsley, Charles Kellaway, Clem Hill and Warwick Armstrong – for a collective total of 11 runs.

Apart from the location, the common element to each of those collapses was the team on the receiving end ultimately suffered defeats.

Which only serves to further highlight Pakistan's unerring ability to take hold of games on the strength of mercurial bursts only to hand back that control through equally inexplicable bouts of mediocrity.

If the beneficiary of those fluctuations today were Australia's under-pressure middle-order, then the suffering was heaped upon Pakistan's bowlers who had done so much to keep their team in the contest.

Their initial contribution on day three at the MCG came with the bat, after the loss of last recognised batter Rizwan 35 minutes into the morning session left them at risk of a triple-figure first-innings deficit.

Rizwan succumbed to an obvious plot hatched by Australia skipper Pat Cummins, who needed just one delivery for the strategy to pay dividends.

With Rizwan on 42 and having forged an invaluable 45-run seventh-wicket stand with Aamir Jamal, Cummins removed David Warner from the slips cordon and relocated him to short cover in the hope of tempting the free-scoring Pakistan keeper into an errant drive.

With the first ball bowled to the new formation, Cummins' full, wide offering was obligingly slapped waist-high to Warner who could scarcely believe his fortune nor his skipper's prescience.

But rather than succumb meekly in Melbourne's mizzling summer rain, Pakistan's tailenders showed mettle lacking in some of their more accomplished batters and added a further 49 runs for the last three wickets.

Elevated from his number 11 berth in the preceding Perth Test to nine in Melbourne by dint of Pakistan's reshuffled bowling stocks, Shaheen repaid the faith with his highest Test score to date, a breezy 21 off 28 balls faced.

Of even greater value was Aamir's unbeaten 33 in just his third Test innings, the previous two (in Perth earlier this month) yielding a combined total of 10.

The hard-hitting right-hander might have been on track for a maiden Test 50 if last man Hamza had placed a price on his wicket rather than unsheathing a wild swipe at Nathan Lyon that led to him being stumped.

The runs added by Pakistan's four quicks through their non-specialist skill whittled Australia's lead from 103 when Rizwan departed to just 54 come the change of innings.

And when Shaheen and Hamza landed their brutal combination punches on Australia's chin either side of lunch, it seemed only a calamity could prevent them from finding themselves in a position from where they might snap their current 15-Test losing streak in Australia.

But as has been the case so often on previous tours here and elsewhere, the chance so unexpectedly created then slipped through their fingers in circumstances seen so many times before.

NRMA Insurance Test series v Pakistan

First Test: Australia won by 360 runs

Second Test: December 26-30, MCG (10.30am AEDT)

Third Test: January 3-7, SCG (10.30am AEDT)

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Steve Smith, Mitch Starc, David Warner

Pakistan squad: Shan Masood (c), Aamir Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi