Hosts left the door ajar handing everything that could go wrong free rein in Multan
Danyal Rasool10-Oct-2024Ollie Pope stood on the balcony, looking fresh and ready. He should have been, after all; he’d spent all but eight balls of the past 150 overs in the air-conditioned comfort of the dressing room. Chris Woakes had just taken a couple that took Saim Ayub past 100 conceded runs. He was the sixth bowler this innings to get there, a feat that has just one precedent in Test history. England had racked up 823-7; at this point, there was more interest in the post-match pitch report than the match report.Pope signalled them in, and ten minutes later, Abdullah Shafique came out to face the first ball. He was coming off a first innings hundred, and England had demonstrated there was little to fear from the surface as the Test dragged on. There is, in truth, little to fear from Chris Woakes away from home at this stage of his career, or from the first delivery he sent down. A polite enquiry of a half-volley, just asking the new ball if it would take early swing. As it headed straight down the line it was released, the answer was definitive: it would not.No matter, though, Shafique would play down the wrong line, anyway. The ball whispered through the unlocked gate, uprooting the off stump. After three-and-a-half days of the surface looking like it was offering nothing, England were repeatedly breaking in. It may look like a magic trick, but even the most impenetrable safe can be broken into if the door’s been left ajar.Related
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And Pakistan have left that door ajar up front a fair bit. Saim Ayub and Abdullah Shafique’s opening stands read like a phone number: 0, 0, 5, 3, 7, 0, 8 and 0, at a combined average of 2.87. No specialist batting pairing has ever managed to go as many innings without cracking into double figures, and if two innings on this surface don’t break that streak, you wonder what will.It says something about a year that saw Pakistan lose a home Test series to Bangladesh 2-0 that this day in Multan might be the nadir. The jarring contrast between the feast of wicket-taking in the second half of the day and the famine that preceded it, the broken spirits of Pakistan as they wilted in the heat, and the sheer inevitability of the disintegration with the bat. How often do you get 823 for 7 and 82 for 6 on the same day, and how do you justify it? It took England 73 balls to take Pakistan’s first four wickets; Pakistan had earlier needed 817 to get there.In that ignominious second half of the day, Pakistan’s fragility, both mental and tactical, was left as nakedly exposed as the pitch prepared in Multan. Shan Masood lasted all of 22 balls in a galling struggle of an innings, and was fortunate to survive that long, reprieved twice when Woakes and Atkinson each put him down. Babar Azam’s nick through to the keeper was reminiscent of the way he kept getting dismissed in Australia, except this was Multan rather than Perth and Atkinson, for all his promise, isn’t exactly Josh Hazlewood or Pat Cummins.Babar Azam’s woes continued in Multan•Associated PressBut with confidence approaching subterranean levels, there isn’t a situation pressing enough to drag him out of the rut he seems irrevocably trapped in, or a pitch flat enough to prevent Pakistan’s now customary third-innings collapse. It is how they’ve lost every other Test match this year, a streak that will be extended when England wrap up the formalities on the final day tomorrow.”Everyone’s a bit disappointed,” Pakistan high-performance coach Tim Nielsen said after the day. “If the players learning anything, it’s that Test cricket is hard. And that’s not a bad lesson to learn because it doesn’t get easier. They need to be resilient and strong and tough.”It hadn’t seemed quite so hard when England, batted, though. In 49 overs, England amassed 331 runs, Pakistan setting the tone when Babar generously put Joe Root down at midwicket off the luckless Naseem Shah. More spilled chances would follow, more boundaries would accumulate, and more records would tumble. The highest away partnership in Test cricket, the highest total Pakistan have ever conceded, the highest individual score against Pakistan? You got them all, and then some.ESPNcricinfo LtdBut little of this is new, and even less is surprising. The only evidence we have of Masood and Abdullah’s return to form is day one of a surface England did on, while the jury on the Saim Ayub experiment remains out. Babar’s now approaching the longest run without a half-century by any specialist Pakistan batter in history. The whack-a-mole Pakistan play with injuries shows no signs of abating, with the struggling Abrar Ahmed the latest fitness doubt.Pakistan’s options to replace him are underwhelming, exacerbated by no obvious replacements from the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy. You know why? Because three Tests into the biggest red-ball summer in a generation, this year’s edition is yet to begin. September saw them play the Champions One-Day Cup instead, and while its merits or otherwise remain disputed, white-ball spinners are of little use to Pakistan without any evidence their skills are transferrable to this format against a batting line-up of England’s class.But while it’s hard to blame individuals for a broken structure, losing six wickets in a session on this deck lies at the feet of the individuals in this side. Aamer Jamal and Salman Ali Agha – two of Pakistan’s brighter spots over the last year – demonstrated exactly that in an unbeaten 70-run partnership that closed out the day. Pakistan may have dragged out the inevitable overnight in Multan, but the agony is merely being prolonged. And as far as many in this particular Test side are concerned, it’s perhaps an appropriate metaphor.