It certainly had its moments. After witnessing a complete demise of top-order batsmen, as almost the first half of the deck took turns in beating each other back to the pavilion, an ultimate question hanged in the balance: Where did Pakistan go wrong? At which point and place in history did we completely and utterly lost all of the pages from the cricketing book, so much so that some of the instances reminded us of childhood days and ‘galli muhalla’ cricket? Was it specifically the preparation of the pitch that was tailored in such a way that it solely favored the attacking bowlers and nothing else, or was it designed to help both sides of the wicket but the bowlers extracted maximum advantage and used it in their favor?
From what it seemed to me (after watching a clip of the hat-trick), Butt’s dismissal was completely an unplayable delivery. I believe Arun Lal was doing commentary at that moment in time, and he mentioned that any top-order batsman of the world would have found that ball next to impossible. The next two deliveries followed almost the exact same pattern, and as from my point of view, they were very hard to get through as well (Although Yousuf’s dismissal is a tricky one, with a huge gap between his bat and pad. The ball beautifully swung into the right-hander, similar to the previous two deliveries). With the above mentioned, was the Indian bowling too good for us in the early stages, or did we (once again) fell victim to the hyper-pressure that was created all around us? Did our batsmen threw their wickets away too sheepishly, or the deliveries that were bowled to them were almost impractical and unattainable to play with?
Although Pakistan did manage to glue the spectators’ back into their seats by snatching few quick top-order wickets, please note that I am specifically refering to first innings ‘collapse’ here, and the ultimate reason/theory behind it. Was our experience from today enough to stamp on the envelope that we should prepare ‘sporting’ ( or FAST AND BOUNCY, as some might call it 
) wickets in the future? Also, I have raised this question before, and I will raise it again as well. Is it already the time for neutral curators to start the supervision of pitches? As we all know, such a surface that we have viewed today might very well have stemmed from the fact that PCB had a gigantic hole of pressure on them to prepare a ‘resulting’ wicket, hence today’s play as such. If there would have been equal amount of helping pitches (to both sides of the wicket) back in previous two test matches, we might not have seen a lateral collapse such as we did, which, again, implies the question from above. Should the entire cricketing industry hand over the home field advantage to a bunch of ‘professionals’ who promise to hold and maintain the true definition of test cricket, or should this issue be completely brushed aside?
Comments/Concerns/Questions/Opinions?