Pakistan Australia | ||
Dates 19 December 2009 – 5 February 2010 Captains Mohammad Yousuf
Shahid Afridi (5th ODI)
Shoaib Malik (Twenty20) Result Australia won the 3-match series 3–0 Most runs Salman Butt (280)
Umar Akmal (199)
Mohammad Yousuf (178) Most wickets Mohammad Asif (13)
Danish Kaneria (9)
Mohammad Amir (8) | ||
The Pakistan cricket team toured Australia for a 3-match Test series, a 5-match ODI series, and 1 Twenty20 International from 19 December 2009 to 5 February 2010.
Contents
During the final ODI match, the stand-in captain, Shahid Afridi, was involved in an alleged ball tampering incident, when he was seen biting the cricket ball. He was immediately called by the match referee after the match was over. There Afridi pleaded guilty to ball tampering and he was banned from two Twenty20 Internationals.
During the Twenty20 International, Australian fast bowler Shaun Tait bowled the fastest delivery ever recorded in Australia (160.7 km/h). Tait achieved the feat on the second ball of his first over. It is also the third fastest delivery ever recorded behind Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar.
Australia registered a clean sweep by winning the Test series 3-0, the ODI series 5-0 and the only T20.
During the tour, speculation was rife that captain Mohammad Yousuf was involved in a power struggle with former skippers Younis Khan and Shoaib Malik and that team morale was low.
Following the tour, the Pakistan Cricket Board conducted an inquiry and announced that Yousuf and Younis would not be selected for the country in future, implying a life exclusion, and banned Malik and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan for a year each. Afridi and the brothers Umar and Kamran Akmal were all fined and put on probation for six months. Kamran had been dropped after the second Test because of a string of dropped catches, but spoke out against the decision and insisted that he was not dropped, while Umar was accused of disruption by feigning injury in an attempt to go on strike in solidarity.
2nd Test
At an inquiry after the series was completed, the management of the Pakistan team testified that they suspected that some of the Pakistan team conspired with bookmakers in match-fixing events during this match. Pakistani wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal missed four catches and a run-out in the Australian second innings as Australia turned around a substantial first innings deficit to win the Test. However, the Australian captain Michael Clarke stated that he "certainly had no suspicions". Several months later, Mazhar Majeed a man who had accepted a bribe to provide information about spot-fixing during Pakistan's summer tour of England, stated that the match had been fixed and that the fixers had made more than a million pounds off of Pakistan's loss from a commanding position. There has been no other corroboration of Majeed's statements.