Cummins stands by Australia tactics after Karachi draw

The Aussies ended up three wickets short of a thrilling Test victory on Wednesday, as in-form Pakistan duo Babar Azam (196) and Mohammad Rizwan (104*) helped hold off the Australian attack on a deteriorating fifth day wicket.

Cummins' decision to continue batting into the third day's play was questioned, while his insistence to not enforce the follow-on when leading by a whopping 408 runs on the first innings also raised some eyebrows.

But the Australia skipper stood by the tactics that were employed.

"In terms of tactics, I think overall I wouldn't change too much to be honest," Cummins said.

"I thought batting into day three gave us that chance to really have a crack at them on day three ... it probably went better than we would have expected.

"But over here, the wickets are pretty good.

"We try and bat two-and-a-half days on the best time to bat on the wicket, hoping it's going to break up on days four and five, and it held together pretty well, they batted well so I think overall, happy."

Cummins said dropped catches during Pakistan's second innings proved costly for his side, with the usually reliable Steve Smith and Usman Khawaja among those to spill easy chances.

Smith put down Abdullah Shafique at slip on day four at a crucial juncture of the game, while Khawaja could have had Australia's eighth wicket of the innings when he dropped Rizwan at short cover in the third last over of the match.

"Probably disappointing thing this game as well, if we took a couple of those catches it might have been a different scenario," Cummins said.

"The good thing is it's nil-all, we didn't lose anything, there's another game next week.

"Coming over here in these conditions at the start of the series, if you said it was going to be nil-all after two games you'd probably take that."