depth showed, as head coach Buzz Williams played 10 players -- and eig

The local cafes have been packed for days, but on the fifth day, there is no queue to get your ten-dollar lunch specials. There is no police outside the ground making sure cricket fans dont get run over. Neroli Meadows and Merv Hughes have almost the entire Woolloongabba Place Park to themselves for some TV work. Only a handful watch Pakistan in the nets. Most of the people walking around the ground are not fans but Cricket Australia, Queensland Cricket or Brisbane Lions employees. The plastic bollards to give the crowd extra walking space are being taken down even as a few spectators walk past them.That is because no one really believes Pakistan can win.Off the second ball of the day, Asad Shafiq plays and misses. Yasir Shah plays a flash uppercut soon after, and you can feel Australia will just get one right, and the lack of crowd will be justified by a quick finish. But Australia dont get many right.A single guided to deep point is just one of the 490 needed, but it brings the target to under a hundred and cricket makes that a noteworthy occurrence. Shafiq is farming the strike, making sure that Yasir doesnt have to face too many balls. Apparently, he hasnt watched Yasir in the nets over the last two days, because he has looked more assured than Younis, more in-form than Misbah and technically superior to Sarfraz Ahmed. Shafiq plays and misses again at one; that may have hit a crack. Will this heroic defiance be ended by simple day-five deterioration?But as Yasir plays some effortless cover drives, and Shafiq stops playing and missing, the first signs of tension start to show on Australian faces. A graceful push through cover compels David Warner to throw every part of himself at stopping the ball. Instead, it eludes him and gently nudges the boundary triangle. The total crosses 400, another pointless landmark, another moral victory for Pakistan. More belief.Yasir plays an offside waft, not even a real shot; the field is up, and he was sucked into the wrong shot. The ball is passed to Steven Smith who sighs for what seems like seven seconds. Yasir backs up his weak shot with an ordinary stroke that misses the ball by about a foot, and instead hits the ground. Matthew Wade and Smith show some excitement, but its not a real appeal, its just the hope of a real appeal. Its now half an hour, and the game is different than before: there are two set batsmen, one frustrated captain, two tiring strike bowlers and one ever-softening ball.Ian Healy talks to the Pakistani fans, of which there are few, but they are loud enough for it to feel like a home game. One fan claims they will win, not only this Test, but all the Tests. It is different from the passionate pessimism of regular Pakistan fans, but even gung-ho patriotism aside, you can see his point.Australia seems to have no definite plan, no grip on the contest, and now Jackson Bird is warming up. Bird has bowled well and has earned his spot by taking wickets, but hes at his best with a new ball, winkling out top-order batsmen. His first ball seems gentle and apologetic, and is guided with grace and no effort by Shafiq, who happily lets Yasir face Bird, in a way he never did for Mitchell Starc or Josh Hazlewood. Nathan Lyon comes on and Shafiq pushes him away effortlessly as well, and has no qualms about Yasir facing him either - this despite the fact that Yasir is almost dismissed from an excellent Lyon ball straightaway.During a Bird over, Warner comes excitedly to talk to Smith at slip. Next ball, Bird hits a crack; its probably not true, but I like to think that Warner said, all we need to do is hit that crack a lot. The ball flies past the one floating slip, and Smith reacts by putting out a fly slip, who is so square hes almost a fly gully. Yasir responds with a push through the covers for two. Warner chases after it like no man has ever chased after a two in the covers. There is such power in his running, such desperation, and yet it was always going to be two. It was as if Warner thought that by running fast, he could change Australias new fate, of being on the wrong side of the biggest chase in cricket.At the one-hour mark, our stats team point out that only once in Pakistans Test history before this have their numbers 7 to 10 scored over 20 in the same innings.Smith tries something new: a short leg, a short midwicket; fly gully goes back to standard gully and Bird tries to go straight. On a morning of almost no obvious plans or proactive calls, this one is quite clear. Yasir reacts by drop-kicking the straight ball over square legs head like hes operating Viv Richards in a computer game. Forget belief, Yasir now has swag.Lyon beats Yasir and appeals for a caught behind; Wade takes the bails off, and he asks for a stumping. Half the team appeal to one umpire, half to the other, some for a catch, some for a stumping, and probably a few for lbw. Its not an appeal for a wicket; it is not out in any of crickets ten dismissal laws. Its an appeal for help.It is then, with what might be thousands but could be just hundreds of people in the ground, I suddenly realise; I could be at one of the single most amazing days of cricket in history. Pakistan still need heaps, Australia still only need two balls, but it doesnt feel like that. All my cricket background is saying, this will stop, that theyll get a good ball in, or Pakistan will struggle when the overwhelming nature of chasing 490 gets down to a handful of runs. But I dont care. Now I believe.When a strong drive from Shafiq crashes into the non-strikers stumps, there is a sudden panic, as Yasir doesnt have his bat down. But when you see the replay you see a ball heading for Birds hand, only to take an exaggerated dip. Now it might have been spin on the ball that made it do that, or the game now deciding that Pakistan must win. I decide the dip existed, and that it was a sign of a supernatural presence - Mother Cricket - guiding it away.Starc comes back on, Yasir flays, and Shafiq goes down to tell him not to. Yasir pushes Starc through cover; Starc looks at Smith, and Smith shrugs back at Starc. Everyone is talking to someone, every ball. Ian Gould talks to Yasir about something, and suddenly I need to know what is going on: why are they talking, what does it mean, why cant I hear them? Every single small moment, a lingering look at cover and point, or a back pat between the batsmen is now the single most important thing I have ever seen.And Asad Shafiq. I mean what is happening there? He was supposed to be in poor form, still hiding down at six and not taking up his rightful place at three or four. He was barely involved in the first innings and now look at him. He seems to have worked out the exact mathematical dimensions of this ground to find every single or two he needs. Hes batting with Misbahs mind and Younis self-determination, and prettier than either. Shafiqs bat has become something extraordinary, like it was made from a willow tree that was struck by lightning, crafted by Hattori Hanzo and one that he, and only he, could pull out of an enchanted stone. With it, he calmly guides another ball away to the boundary, calmly like this isnt the chance for perhaps the most incredible victory, but just a club game with some mates.Yasir slashes at point. Lyon launches himself as best he can without the athletic gifts that some of his team-mates have, gets a finger to it - just one which you can see bend as the ball crashes through. The other fielders clean up beyond him, the batsmen run three, the balls returned to Wade, who throws it up to mid-off, and Lyon is still on the ground. Shafiq takes a single next ball, and Yasir is back on strike. He leaves a ball after a shuffle down the wicket; it hits his back leg and on commentary, Mark Nicholas says, They ask, they ask, they get it, they get it, they get it. But just to prove that Yasirs judgment all morning has been on song, he reviews instantaneously, and its overturned almost as quick.But the reviews show up something else, something which will be far more important: reverse swing. Its not clear, until another one crashes into the pads, and yes, thats what it is. Oh Pakistan, it had to be that, didnt it?Starcs next over has him around the wicket going at the batsmen. He gets one down the legside and Yasir moves across and it takes something as it goes through to Wade. Starc goes up to appeal, but the ball is trickling along the ground and Wade is desperately trying to pick it up, like he can make up for what has just happened. He gets up and seems to say to everyone, its just pad, or that it didnt carry, but essentially, its all cool guys. The replays show there was bat, but the replays that needed to show whether the catch carried, never comes. Wade finishes the over by fumbling another ball and they dont take the run. Wade walks down pitch trying to spin the helmet on his hand casually. It doesnt spin well, it doesnt look casual. It is barely repressed panic. The panic shifts though with Shafiqs first play and miss in an age. There is no doubt now, the ball is moving, the spell is breaking.Next over, Starc is around the wicket again, and a good yorker is just squeezed away by Yasir. Now it is Starc v Shafiq. Starc, like a chum-baited shark, isnt the same bowler as earlier. The ball jumps up at Shafiq, fast and mean. The man who has been a Zen batting master is suddenly everywhere at once, in the air, facing the wrong way, each limb doing a different thing. But the ball has somehow ignored the chaos to find the leading edge, and it balloons up.Its not that high, its not a tough catch, but it goes to Warner - the man who earlier tried to beat fate by running fast - on a platter with a champagne flute beside it. After the false dawns and optimistic cries of hope, the Australians wait for the catch to be completed, and when it is, they scream, the way you do when you have just realised you arent about to become the laughing stock of the world. Not Starc, he barely raises a hand.Shafiq is even more emotionless. Shafiq was stoic all innings, and his face is the same now as he takes his gloves off and starts heading off. That is until Yasir walks over and embraces him. Then it hits him, and it becomes obvious that up until that very moment, he believed. He believed more than Misbah, more than the loud Pakistan fan on Channel Nine, more than anyone could, or should. He takes his helmet off, and at first he isnt even walking towards the dressing rooms, just drifting off the ground. Of all the things he had allowed himself to dream, the walk off the ground as a loser wasnt one.Rahat Alis reputation as an entertaining batsman, for almost none of the right reasons, means that Yasir decides to hit out. He tries to slog Starc with no luck, and then he tries to hit a yorker. He makes contact, but he doesnt know where, so he takes off, before realising it has gone behind him, and he turns. Smith at first just gently takes the dribbling ball, but then, like a gunfighter who sees a man drop his weapon, he goes for the kill. It was Smith who allowed Pakistan to dream, for Shafiq to be the hero, and now it is the same hands that end the match.Maybe it was reverse swing, Pakistans most dramatic superpower, that changed the balance, but it was quality fielding, their one eternal weakness, that finished them. It was 40 runs those who werent watching will say, not even that close. They wont get it. Just like how those who didnt believe in Pakistan didnt get that they believed in the first place. And they may have lost, but after all that, you know they still believe. Peter Fairbanks Rays Jersey . LOUIS -- Theres no telling how these wacky World Series games will end. Evan Longoria Rays Jersey . Just not the game. Kyle Palmieri scored two straight goals in the third period to rally the Anaheim Ducks past the Philadelphia Flyers 3-2 on Tuesday night. https://www.cheapraysonline.com/1286i-jose-de-leon-jersey-rays.html . Jordan Lynch, the all-purpose Heisman Trophy finalist from Northern Illinois, failed to make it into that exclusive club. Diego Castillo Rays Jersey . Sulaiman, 44, was chosen unanimously Tuesday in a vote by the leadership, the World Boxing Council said. Sulaiman becomes the sixth president of the organization. Nate Lowe Jersey . The Vancouver coach and an announced sellout crowd of 18,910 watched in dismay as the Canucks lost 7-4 to the New York Islanders on Monday night by squandering a 3-0 lead in the third period. BLACKSBURG, Va. -- A year ago, Alabama State beat Virginia Tech in the season opener and maybe cost the Hokies an NCAA Tournament bid.But Virginia Tech took care of business this time.Zach LeDay scored 20 points off the bench to lead the Hokies to an 80-67 win over Maine on Friday.LeDay led a balanced attack for the Hokies (1-0), who had four players in double figures. He hit 8 of 13 from the floor and grabbed 12 rebounds for his 13th career double-double.Ahmed Hill, who missed last season with a knee injury, scored 14 points in his return, while Justin Robinson had 13 and Chris Clarke finished with 12.I think, like any other coach would say after game 1, we did good things, and I think there are distinct ways we can improve, Virginia Tech coach Buzz Williams said. Theres a lot of room for growth, for sure.Wes Myers led Maine (0-1) with 18 points.Despite size and experience advantages, Virginia Tech didnt put away the Black Bears until midway through the second half. The Hokies led by eight with around 17 minutes remaining before going on a 15-2 run that was powered by LeDays six points. Maine got no closer than the final margin.It was a good effort, but we just couldnt sustain it for the full 40 minutes, Maine coach Bob Walsh said. To stand up against them the way we did, I think we can take some good things out of that.The Hokies, taller and stronger at virtually every position, finished with a 44-36 rebounding advantage.BIG PICTUREMainee: The Black Bears, picked to finish last in the America East, could be in for a long season after losing seven players off last seasons team -- five with eligibility remaining.dddddddddddd Seven newcomers joined the program for this season.Virginia Tech: The Hokies expect to be a deeper team with 85 percent of their scoring and rebounding returning. Their depth showed, as head coach Buzz Williams played 10 players -- and eight of them scored.RETURN TO ACTIONHill wasnt the only Hokie to miss last season. Ty Outlaw sat out the entire year with hypertensive cardiomyopathy, or a thickening of the heart muscle that makes it harder to pump blood. Cleared in mid-June, the junior-college transfer saw his first action as a Virginia Tech player and scored one point in 15 minutes.BUILDING BLOCKMyers transferred from Niagara to Maine and sat out last season and will be a key component for a young Black Bears squad. He hit 6 of 13 and grabbed eight rebounds and didnt look intimidated against the Hokies.He is a guy we can count, Walsh said.UP NEXTThe Black Bears will remain in Virginia, traveling to Farmville to face Longwood on Sunday in what will be the second of five straight road games to start the season.The Hokies play the second of three straight home games to open the season next Tuesday when they take on High Point. ' ' '