- Pakistan won their first home Test in over three years
- Noman Ali took 8 wickets as England collapsed for 144
- Pakistan won by 152 runs, setting up a series decider
England’s already slim chance of winning the second Test evaporated on a steamy Friday morning as they threw their bats around – literally, in one case – and their wickets away, allowing Noman Ali and Sajid Khan to bowl Pakistan to their first home Test victory in 12 games and three and a half years.
If a successful run chase appeared doubtful at the start of the day, with England’s openers already dismissed and 261 runs still needed, it didn’t take long for it to fall completely out of reach. England did not even get halfway to their objective, with Noman collecting eight second-inning wickets, seven of which came on a dizzying final morning, as they were bowled out for 144. Pakistan won by 152 runs, avoiding a series whitewash and securing a series decider in Rawalpindi next week.
England’s assistant coach, Paul Collingwood, promised on Thursday evening that they will not abandon their motto of playing offensive shots and scoring quickly. The tactic’s intended purpose of applying pressure to the bowlers was considerably weakened by the frequency with which they lost wickets.
Pakistan got their first breakthrough with only the eighth ball of the morning, Sajid’s spin changing Ollie Pope’s push from a fine defensive shot into a simple return catch, setting the tone for a frantic hour ahead after successfully manoeuvring 26 balls on Thursday evening. Joe Root faced only eight more before missing a sweep and receiving a lbw.
Harry Brook, like Root, succumbed to Noman, who was finally rewarded for the excellence of his bowling throughout the game after Sajid took the first-inning wicket. As Root Brook reviewed the on-field lbw decision, fans in the stadium’s busiest sections, the Hanif Muhammad and Mushtaq Ahmed enclosures, cascaded down from the shaded seats at the top to the flat concourse at the bottom to watch the DRS system work its magic and seal the batters’ fate on the stadium’s single large screen. Brook’s 16 made this his first Test in Pakistan without a century, lowering his average to 101.25.
Jamie Smith only scored six runs before miscuing a slog to mid-on, where Shan Masood made an easy catch. Ben Stokes and Brydon Carse then scored 37 for the seventh wicket, England’s best partnership, with Carse hitting two sixes down the ground off Sajid before the captain came down the track to Noman, missed the ball and let go of his bat as he swung through his follow-through. While sailing high to backward square leg, Stokes turned empty-handed to watch Mohammad Rizwan remove the bails.
Carse added another six to his collection before becoming the next to go, with a wild hoik only nudging Noman to slide. He plainly did not notice this one, as he had grown accustomed to meatier contact, making it the most perplexing of the day’s numerous critiques. That left Noman with only six balls to bowl: Jack Leach edged the fifth into his pads and looped it to Abdullah Shafique at short leg, while Shoaib Bashir pushed the sixth to the same fielder.
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Victory is Pakistan’s reward for taking a huge risk by playing on a used pitch and fielding a team heavy with spinners, a risk whose chances of success were almost entirely dependent on winning the toss and enjoying the best batting conditions on day one and the best bowling conditions after that. It does not appear to be a highly repeatable technique with the potential to lead to consistent, long-term success, but they will believe it is something they can plan for in the future. As they tried to keep this series alive, it was all they had.
England attempted to cover all bases with their team selection, and at times, they may have regretted choosing two spinners over an extra seamer, as well as two-seamers over an extra spinner. In the end, however, having lost such an important toss, they needed all of the remaining coin-flip opportunities to go their way. Particularly in the field on the third day, when they twice dropped Salman Agha while he was still in single figures and then watched him add more than 50 crucial bonus runs, or when Ben Duckett caught Sajid Khan but had to drop the ball as his momentum took him over the boundary, or when Saim Ayub scored the very first runs of Pakistan’s second innings by top-edging tantalisingly over the heads of wicket-keeper and slip, or when the ball looped off Aamer Jamal’s pad and just wide of a diving Zak Crawley, it did not quite happen.
Leach leads England’s demolition of Pakistan in the first Test
