Given how packed the cricket calendar is, the brief three-match Twenty20 series between Pakistan and Australia didn't seem to promise much. But, as Osman Samiuddin writes in the National, the tour has actually gone much better than might have been expected: the cricket was close enough to become significant.
Cricket is often derided by those who don't really follow it for not being a particularly physical and taxing sport and sometimes, watching a sweat-less Test session in England, you could even begin to wonder yourself.But one look at any of the games here and the full effect of just what these athletes were putting into the game was never more apparent. The abiding image is of Michael Hussey, who is probably fit enough to complete a triathlon or two before play starts, on his haunches on the boundary line between every delivery in the Abu Dhabi ODI.