Yasir's influence goes beyond wickets

Yasir suffered a back injury during one of the practice sessions in Cairns which forced him to miss the pink-ball warm-up game against a Cricket Australia XI – a match the Pakistanis won by 201 runs.

In his absence, left-arm slow bowler Mohammad Nawaz pulled off the finishing role, taking three wickets on the last day to restrict the CA XI to 109.

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Although Pakistan have called another left-arm spinner, 17-year-old Mohammad Asghar, as a back up to Yasir, the leg-spinner is close to gaining full fitness and trained with the team under lights at the Gabba on Monday night.

"Yasir Shah is coming on nicely. He's come along really well," Arthur told media in Brisbane.

"He bowled six overs the last day in Cairns which was pleasing.

"It will be good to see him go in the nets today. I saw him in the hotel and he seemed fine."

Pakistan have relied heavily on Yasir's bowling in recent times.

Since his Test debut against Australia in Dubai in 2014 he has taken 31.52 per cent of all wickets – 116 out of 368 - taken by Pakistan bowlers and missed just two Tests in that time, once due to injury against England in Abu Dhabi last year and another when the team opted for a four-prong pace attack against New Zealand in Hamilton last month.

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With that in mind, Pakistan just cannot to afford to play without their ace spinner, particularly at a venue where the slow bowlers since 2010 have taken their wickets at an average of 45.90, the lowest mean for spinners among all the Australian venues hosting more than five Tests during that period. 

"He is obviously integral to our plans as well," Arthur said. "That's good because you don't want to deprive the Australian public of seeing an unbelievable leg-spinner going about his business."

The Pakistan team not only rely on him as a wicket-taking force, but also as a bowler who can speed up the over-rate that their seamers always struggle to maintain.

Their poor over rates have resulted in one-Test suspensions for captain Misbah-ul-Haq twice in the last five years, as well as a 100 per cent match fee fine for the stand-in captain Azhar Ali after the second Test against New Zealand in Hamilton last month.

"Over-rates is an absolute priority for us.

"The last game in Hamilton we didn't have Yasir and we played four quicks because there was a hell of a lot of grass on the wicket. So that just made it a little bit slower as well, but we continue working on it."

Since 2010, the green caps have trespassed the allocated time on nine occasions across the three formats and the history suggests that it hampers their bowling plans during the match, as they are forced to operate with the part-time tweakers to cover the lost time.

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In their opening match of the World Cup 2003 against Australia at Johannesburg, then-captain Waqar Younis was forced to have six overs from Younis Khan to compensate for the lost time, allowing Australia to recover from 4-86 to 310 in 50 overs and Andrew Symonds to notch his maiden ODI hundred, a brutal 143 off 125 balls.

"Our players are giving away all their cash and we've had a captain suspended because of it," Arthur said of the over-rate struggles.

"We've just got to be better than that, we have to get through our overs and there's a constant reminder all the time that we have to get through our overs."

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