The hosts, resuming on 154 for 3 and replying to New Zealand’s first-innings 449, finished day three on 407-9 after losing four quick wickets in the final session.<\/p>\n
Saud, who forged a 150-run partnership with Sarfaraz Ahmed for the fifth wicket, was unbeaten on 124, which included 17 fours.<\/p>\n
Abrar Ahmed, who denied Ish Sodhi a hat-trick, was yet to open his account at the other end.<\/p>\n
Saud went into the match with five half-centuries in his first four tests and the hundred duly arrived in his fifth, on his home ground.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Pakistan lost Imam-ul-Haq, who made 83 before falling caught behind off New Zealand captain Tim Southee in the only dismissal of the morning session.<\/p>\n
Southee reviewed the original not-out decision and replays confirmed the ball had brushed the toe-end of Imam’s bat before nestling in Tom Blundell’s gloves.<\/p>\n
Sarfaraz (78) joined Saud in a union of local boys who scored freely after the lunch break to narrow the deficit.<\/p>\n
Sarfaraz brought up the third successive fifty of his first test series in nearly four years but the hundred he was looking for did not materialise.<\/p>\n
Two balls after getting an lbw decision against him overturned, Sarfaraz was stumped off Daryl Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Saud took a single off Michael Bracewell to bring up his hundred and got a reprieve on 102 when Tom Latham grassed a simple catch at short point off Southee.<\/p>\n
Bracewell took a brilliant catch in the slips to remove Agha Salman for 41, however, and suddenly wickets started tumbling.<\/p>\n
Sodhi bowled Naseem Shah and Mir Hamza with successive deliveries but Abrar blocked the hat-trick delivery.<\/p>\n
The opening test ended in a draw.<\/p>\n
–Reuters<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The hosts, resuming on 154 for 3 and replying to New Zealand’s first-innings 449, finished day three on 407-9 after losing four quick wickets in the final session. Saud, who forged a 150-run partnership with Sarfaraz Ahmed for the fifth wicket, was unbeaten on 124, which included 17 fours. Abrar Ahmed, who denied Ish Sodhi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2106,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions\/2106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}