It took England an hour and a half on the final day to not so much put Pakistan out of their misery as plunge them deeper into it. They have now lost six Tests in a row and keep finding new ways to get beaten – in this case one that was completely novel, no team in Test history having scored as many as 500 runs in their first knock and gone on to lose by an innings.
A 109-run partnership between Salman Agha and Aamir Jamal delayed England’s celebrations but could not deny them, and once it had been broken it took just six overs and one ball to finish the innings and the game, Pakistan losing by an innings and 47 runs.
It ended with two wickets in four balls for Jack Leach, who finished as the game’s most successful bowler on his return to the side after eight months. First he dived to his left to brilliantly catch Shaheen Shah Afridi off his own bowling and put Pakistan on the precipice. Naseem Shah then came in, hit his second ball down the ground for six and tried to do the same with his third; this time he missed, leaving Jamie Smith to complete a straightforward stumping. With Abrar Ahmed having been hospitalised – apparently after contracting dengue fever – on Wednesday evening and still there as the game reached its conclusion, Pakistan’s innings ended.
Their defeat will be particularly painful because it reopens recent and painful wounds: Pakistan’s last Test series, against Bangladesh in August, began with them scoring 448 for six declared in their first innings and still losing the game by 10 wickets. This time they scored even more and lost by even more. They are finding ways not just to lose but to be humiliated, and they have now lost all six Tests since the appointment of Shan Masood as captain.
For the first two days there was no hint of the drama to come in this one. When Pakistan’s first innings ended late on the second they had scored 556 at a leisurely 3.73 an over and an England victory seemed unlikely to the point of outlandishness. As the tourists’ reply began they had one opener nursing a dislocated thumb, another playing for the first time in over two months, their captain out with a hamstring injury and within 10 minutes his stand-in dismissed for a duck. Not even two days later, they declared with their score 823 for seven, England’s highest total for more than 85 years.
What followed was a period of wild, and wildly anomalous, wicket-taking as Pakistan were reduced to 82 for six and the game was effectively decided. In the first two innings of the match 1,794 balls were bowled and 17 wickets taken, every one hard fought. Suddenly six were surrendered in 146 balls, one every 14 runs.
Jamal and Salman ended the chaos, providing a measure of calm and resolve when their teammates had completely lost theirs. Jamal was dropped by Shoaib Bashir on Thursday evening when he was on 12 and the partnership 31, and they got away with a couple of rash moments on Friday morning before Salman was trapped lbw by Leach in the first over after drinks. He had been one of the game’s key players, scoring a century in Pakistan’s first innings, conceding a century of runs in England’s reply, and then adding another 63 to become the only player to impress with the bat twice.
These were difficult moments punctuated by some relatively easy runs, England’s ultra-attacking fields leaving plenty of gaps for the ball to squirt through and few fielders in the deep to stop it once it did. Notably 44% of Salman’s second-innings runs came from fours, compared with 38% in his first and despite his strike rate dipping from 87.39 to 75.00.
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Once he went, Pakistan shifted to wild and not particularly successful slogging, with even the possibility of making England bat again by this point a distant dream. Ollie Pope dropped a straightforward chance at square leg after Jamal skied a pull, but it was too late for it to make a difference to anything but the batter’s average – he ended unbeaten with 55 off 104.
A mark of Pakistan’s failure, and England’s achievement: only one team in Test history have scored more than Pakistan’s total of 556 in their first innings and gone on to lose – that was Australia against England, 130 years ago, and they lost by only 10 runs.
For all the individual and collective milestones passed as it played out perhaps the most surprising thing about this remarkable match was the contrast with the drab, lifeless pitch it was played on. The second Test starts at the same venue on Tuesday, on a surface both sides’ bowlers must hope will prove finer and fairer. For Pakistan, that is not all that needs to change.