Pakistan leads by 139 after Babar and Agha fall in Sri Lanka fielding trap on 5th day of 1st test

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan's top-order batters stumbled against Sri Lanka captain Kusal Mendis’ innovative field setting to reach 151-5 on the fifth and final day of the first cricket test on Friday.

Skipper Babar Azam, who scored 34, and Salman Ali Agha made 13 before both fell into the Mendis’ fielding trap and offered catches at short backward square leg on a second successive overcast morning at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium.

Pakistan, which curtailed the Sri Lankan first-innings lead to 12 on the back of inspiring seven-wicket debut by fast bowler Saqib Khan, led by 139 runs at lunch with two sessions remaining in the opening test of the two-match series.

Saud Shakeel took a nasty blow on the shoulder off Dilshan Madushanka’s short ball, but dug in for almost the entire first session and was unbeaten on a patient 23 with wicketkeeper-batter Ghazi Ghori not out on 7.

Shakeel successfully overturned an lbw decision against him early in the innings and has faced 85 balls on a wicket where seamers were getting assistance under overcast conditions.

Resuming on 57-1, Pakistan had a disastrous start to the final day when both the overnight batters Azan Awais and Mohammad Taha were dismissed without adding to their scores of 22 and 24 respectively.

Awais flashed hard at Lahiru Kumara’s (1-42) first ball and was caught at slips while Asitha Fernando’s (2-20) delivery seamed enough to get the outside edge of Taha’s bat from the other end.

Babar added 50 runs with defiant Shakeel and struck six boundaries with his trademark cover drives but yet again couldn’t convert a good start into big innings as his drought of century in test matches was extended to 42 innings.

Babar also survived two chances. Kamindu Mendis grassed a regulation chance in the second slip when Babar was on 22 and then had a close lbw call went in his favor on an umpire's call before he fell into Mendis' trap and gave a simple catch to Lahiru Udara.

There was a 20-minute stoppage due to bad light, but on resumption Milan Rathnayake (2-32) executed the fielding plan with another short ball to Agha and Pasindu Sooriyabandara brought up a spectacular catch before Shakeel and Ghori played out a tense half-hour before lunch.

See AP’s full cricket coverage here

Pakistan's Saud Shakeel plays a shot during the fifth day of the first test cricket match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Sri Lanka's Lahiru Kumara celebrates after taking the wicket of Pakistan's Azan Awais during the fifth day of the first test cricket match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Sri Lanka's Milan Rathnayaka, center, celebrates with teammates after taking the wicket of Pakistan's Babar Azam during the fifth day of the first test cricket match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Pakistan's Babar Azam walks off the field after losing his wicket during the fifth day of the first test cricket match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

HONG KONG (AP) — From Asia to the U.S., Microsoft’s outage involving services like Outlook and Teams has dragged on for hours and impacted many users, companies and some government operations as the technology giant struggled with fixing the issue.

Microsoft said in an update Friday that the outage was affecting a wide range of Microsoft 365 offerings that interact with its Exchange Online and email services. Services including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot were reported by users to be down.

The Redmond, Washington-based company said it was trying different ways to identify the cause of the problem and get its servers back online, using “a measured approach to identify and repair affected infrastructure.”

The company said it did not have any indication that the outage was caused by malicious activity and would treat the incident “with urgency and priority until full resolution.”

More than 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook earlier on Thursday although new reports have since fallen from that peak.

A series of posts by the company on X suggested its engineers were struggling to get the problem fully under control.

Hours after saying it managed to successfully restore service health and functionality, the company said it had updated its list of impacted services and was continuing to address the issue.

Its most recent post offered little hope for users expecting a quick resolution.

“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected,” the company wrote.

U.S.-based industrial technology company Workhorse Group Inc. delayed a conference call for its quarterly earnings because of the outage.

In Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Friday Microsoft had likened the widespread outage to the CrowdStrike outage in 2024.

Burke said he had spoken to Microsoft’s top executive in Australia and the government’s national cybersecurity coordinator about the global disruption.

"They (Microsoft) don’t believe they are dealing with a cyberattack. They believe that they are dealing in some ways (with something) similar to what we saw with respect to CrowdStrike where there is an update that has gone awry,” Burke told reporters in Sydney.

Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike blamed a bug in an update that allowed its systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off a global tech outage in July 2024 that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.

Hong Kong businessperson Danny Lau, who runs an aluminum firm, said his company's Outlook accounts could not receive updates from their U.S. customers due to the outage. If the situation dragged on further, this could “impact the production timeline,” he said.

Air India said its flight operations were unaffected by the global Microsoft outage. However, it temporarily rerouted its email services to ensure customer queries continued to reach the airline without interruption, the company said in a statement.

IndiGo, another Indian airline company, said it also reported disruptions to its email support services, which affected its ability to receive customer queries. The airline in a statement on X said its other support channels remained operational and its flight operations were unaffected.

Singapore’s Government Technology Agency said that government emails were down and that the agency is working with Microsoft to resolve the issue.

The Philippines' Supreme Court said in a statement on X that the ongoing Microsoft 365 service outage has affected some of its operations, including email responses.

In Japan, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the outage impacted the government’s IT infrastructure and that they were “keeping a close eye on the developments.”

OpenAI and Anthropic each reported that they were facing problems connecting with Microsoft 365 tools, underscoring the ripple effects of outages as more people use artificial intelligence platforms to interact with other companies’ software.

AP journalists Adam Schreck in Bangkok, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi and Mayuko Ono in Tokyo contributed.

FILE - A Microsoft logo and sign outside the Microsoft Visitor Center are seen at the company's headquarters Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)