It’s the last over before lunch, the final over of another wicketless session in this series that has sapped the minds and bodies alike of bowlers from both sides.
Azhar Ali is waiting at the crease; it’s a relatively short wait for a player who has waited his entire career to play in front of his home crowd and now they are here on Pakistan’s national day to cheer him as he grinds Australia’s bowlers into the Gaddafi Stadium dust.
Swepson lopes in and hits the pitch just short of a length, but not short enough to justify the cut shot Azhar attempts to play; instead the ball flies off the edge of he bat in between Alex Carey and Steve Smith.
Smith, anticipating the cut, is wrong footed as his weight shifts right and the ball shoots to his left; his fingertips get there in time but the ball bursts through them.
There is nothing within punching distance of Swepson, so he pounds the air in pure, overwhelming frustration.
Toiling, grinding, busting a gut and then holding onto a precious chance is like trying to clutch a handful of water.
This is shaping up to be Pakistan’s day in more than one way.
****
This has been a tour of attrition.
Australia have spoken about it being a Test series of 15 days, each played on its own merit but part of a whole.
And on the 13th day - which also happened to be Pakistan Day, a time of national celebration - time was running out; this Test was almost certainly heading towards another stalemate and a drawn series without a result.
That didn’t seem to bother the crowd, who flooded into Gaddafi Stadium on the national holiday wearing all shades of green, and sat under the hazy, baking skies.
The heat only added to the soporific daze that threatened to engulf spectators on a day when it seemed only divine intervention could produce a wicket.
Australia were burning reviews in desperation and instead of the traditional appeal of ‘Howzat!’, you could almost hear the Australians screaming, ‘Please, for the love of all that is holy, give us something, anything!”
One review was fruitful, when Lyon drew the faintest of edges from the bat of Abdullah Shafique, Alex Carey took the ball cleanly and the third umpire overturned the on-field decision of not out.
But any hope of a flurry of wickets immediately subsided back into a sleepy stupor and the conviction this match would amble to its foregone conclusion.
Pat Cummins was awake though, really awake.
He had bowled with tireless consistency in each of his spells throughout the series and an underlying threat of conjuring something from nothing at any given moment.
The given moment came with a slap in the face of anyone daring to nod off, a blaze of sunlight flooding into a dingy cell.
The ball was full and driven straight back at Cummins who was falling to his left in the follow through; in a flash of reflexive freakishness, Cummins stuck out his right hand and grabbed it after it had already passed him and flung it in the air as he tumbled to the ground.
The roar was primeval and seemed to pass through his teammates.
It was on.
The tea break came and went but the sleepiness had evaporated.
The ball was old enough and Starc stepped in to work it, put his thing down, flip it and reverse it.
It’s possible that Australian fans won’t fully appreciate the oft maligned Starc and his magic balls until they are gone, but there is a unique genius at play when the left-armer is on song and launched at oppositions in short bursts.
Fawad Alam has good reason to fear him, he has fallen victim to Starc before; any stance, let alone Fawad’s exaggerated open one, could have been undone by the cracker that tailed and nipped back in through the gate to light up the stumps.
The ball to Rizwan was even better, delivered from around the wicket, the reversing ball teased in the lateness of the swing and bent devilishly before cruelly straightening enough, just enough, to whiz past the bat and clatter into the off stump.
Now the two of them, Starc and Cummins were hunting and could smell blood, a pair of raptors circling and closing for the lethal strike.
Cummins had joined the reverse swingers party and Sajid Khan was no match as ball after ball tailed in and inevitably caught the inside edge of his bat, while Nauman Ali was no match for another delivery that angled in.
It took just three sweetly fiendish balls for Cummins to set up Hassan Ali; reversing in, reversing in, reversing in and wham! Full and shaping away, Hassan fell for the sucker punch, chasing the ball as it left him and landed in the hands of Steve Smith and handing Cummins a five-fer.
At the end of that over, Cameron Green was coming on to bowl but Starc was hungry and he could sense it was his time; he wasn’t finished yet.
He asked his captain for one more over, one more go at Babar Azam; Cummins apologised to Green and tossed the ball to Starc.
Around the wicket he came and hurled another angled and curving missile; it seemed as though it may have done too much when it rapped Babar on the pads and he immediately reviewed the on-field decision of out.
Even Starc didn’t seem to think it was out. In fact it was barely clipping the leg stump on ball-tracking, but that was enough and Babar was gone; who says fast bowlers can’t be captains?
Three balls later Starc returned to his stock in trade, a searing yorker that speared through Naseem Shah’s defences and into his off stump.
Pakistan had lost seven wickets for 20 runs in 63 balls of blinding wizardry and reverse-swinging genius.
At tea, Waqar Younis, one of the greatest exponents of reverse swing ever seen, had stood in the media centre and cut a cake to celebrate Pakistan Day.
What followed was one of the great reverse swing spells of the modern era that cut a swathe through Pakistan’s resistance.
It may have been Pakistan Day everywhere else.
But in the middle of Gaddafi Stadium, it was definitely Australia’s day.
