All eyes are on the pitch here at the Gaddafi Stadium and the Pakistan skipper is counting on a fast, bouncy track to catapult his boys to a one-all level playing field in the third Test at Rawalpindi.The Day Before is one of Test cricket’s most inscrutable ceremonies. The two captains field questions from the media, giving away nothing in words, squeezing in insinuation between the lines.Inzaman-ul Haq actually does it with purportedly embarrassed smiles. Is it true, he was asked today, that you were not shown the pitch at Lahore? He laughed helplessly and then whispered, ‘‘They showed it to me.’’He has demanded a fast, bouncy track at the Gaddafi Stadium, he said, and all indications are that it will provide movement for the first couple of hours.The pitch is, indeed, the cynosure of attention. At a party last night hosted by Punjab Governor Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool, the PCB’s operations manager Zakir Khan received several phone calls from the office of the ADC to President Musharraf, asking about the state of the pitch.Whatever state, though, Inzamam knows it will be tough for Pakistan to come back into the series after going down in the first match. ‘‘It looks difficult’’, he admitted.Rahul Dravid, for his part, is not fazed by pitch reports. ‘‘Any wicket is the same for both teams’’, he said. For the loss of Zaheer Khan to hamstring injury, India’s bowling reserves have been replenished with the arrival of Ashish Nehra and Ajit Agarkar’s intensive work at the nets over the past week.Nehra is coming off a split webbing injury sustained on his bowling hand and could be considered match-worthy on the morrow. (Only Mohammed Kaif and Ramesh Powar have been ruled out of the playing eleven by Dravid.) In any case, the Karnataka batsman pointed out, this wicket should assist Nehra.On the other hand, for a captain eager for fast, bouncy wickets, Inzamam remains rather tentative about making any claims for his pacers. He laughed his evasive laugh when asked whether Pakistani bowlers have forgotten the art of reverse swing. The key, he says, is line and length — earlier this week, in his syndicated column, he was rather harsh on them, saying they had been over-hyped.Besides the exit of Saqlain Mushtaq (to make way for Imran Nazir), Pakistan cannot count on the services of Moin Khan, out due to a groin injury. Kamran Akmal will keep in his absence.At the end it was Dravid who had to tackle a wrong ’un. Does he reckon, someone enquired, that Sachin Tendulkar will score a double century in Lahore. ‘‘I hope so’’, said the taciturn skipper.
