Babar Azam and his men finished Day-1 at a score of 161 with the loss of 2 wickets as bad light could only allow 57 overs to be bowled on the 1st Day of the 2nd Test match between Bangladesh and Pakistan in Dhaka.
Earlier on the day, Pakistan won the toss and chose to bat first going in with an unchanged XI from the first Test.
Bangladesh, on the other hand, made 3 changes with Mahmudul Hasan Joy (made his debut), Shakib Al Hasan and Khaled Ahmed being included in place of Saif Hassan, Yasir Ali Chowdhury, and Abu Jayed Chowdhury.
On an overcast day at Mirpur, the Bangladeshi seamers could not threaten Pakistan as openers Abid Ali and Abdullah Shafique played sensibly for an opening stand of 59.
As the opening duo was well on their way on yet another century run opening stand, spinner Taijul Islam struck on the 19th over as he dismissed Shafique for 25. Soon after that, Taijul also bagged the wicket of Abid Ali who got out after scoring 39 runs.
Pakistan lost 2 wickets in the 1st session, that too in the span of 11 runs as the honours were on skipper Babar Azam and Azhar Ali to steady the ship. Pakistan ended their first session at 78/2 on a wicket that had already started to turn on Day 1.
After lunch, the experience of Azhar Ali and Babar Azam took over as they took the attack to the Bangladeshi spinners by putting away the bad deliveries for boundaries and played the session with relative ease, both finishing the session with scores of unbeaten 36 and 60 respectively.
Despite a rain break in the 2nd session, the Pakistani batters were firm on their concentration and scored quickly.
Tajiul Islam was the pick of the bowlers for Bangladesh who finished the day with figures of 17-5-49-2. Other bowlers went wicketless as Mehidy Hasan Miraz had figures of 12-2-31-0, Shakib Al Hasan 15-6-33-0, Ebadot Hossain 9-1-28-0, and Khaled Ahmed 4-1-19-0.
Play could not proceed any further after Tea due to bad light as the umpires called it a day after 57 overs meaning both Babar Azam (60 from 99 balls) and Azhar Ali (36 from 112) remained unbeaten with a total of 161/2.
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