Pakistan, Lost Magic & Why Test Cricket Needs it Back

For a while at Edgbaston, England have an appointment they cannot keep.

The series is won. Pakistan’s recognised batting is running out. Another innings defeat remains possible. Then a 21-year-old at No. 9 begins hitting the short ball into the crowd.

Gus Atkinson goes for three sixes in an over. Jofra Archer is hit for six to bring up Razaullah’s fifty, and for six again from the next delivery. Mohammad Abbas, whose principal occupation is usually making runs difficult to score, joins in.

Their ninth-wicket partnership adds 121. England must bat again. The spectators applaud Razaullah off after 81 from 63 balls, including nine sixes.

The next morning, Abbas removes two batters in the opening over. Suddenly, 130 looks like a chase worth watching.

Joe Root and Jordan Cox eventually take England to an eight-wicket victory and a 3-0 sweep. Match updates But Pakistan have briefly altered the emotional ownership of the match. The home side are approaching victory; the visitors are supplying the reason to lean forward.

That matters. Test cricket needs opponents who can disturb an afternoon, make a comfortable captain reconsider his field and persuade an audience that the expected ending is still negotiable. Pakistan’s late resistance did all of that. Masood’s rebuilding, Babar’s runs, Razaullah’s assault and Abbas’s company gave the innings substance as well as spectacle.

It also brought an old question back into view. What happened to the Pakistan that could make England anxious for an entire series?

There are two different overseas histories to examine here. England was once a place Pakistan conquered. Australia has been a place they have repeatedly failed to solve.

Bundling both into a story of perennial touring incompetence erases the distinction. It also makes the present easier to excuse. Pakistan’s English history offers evidence that they can belong in these conditions. Their Australian history shows how long exceptional players and memorable passages can coexist with sustained failure.

Go back to Lord’s in 2016

Misbah-ul-Haq makes a century and lowers himself onto the turf for push-ups. A 42-year-old captain has supplied one of the summer’s indelible images. There is humour in it, personality and an unmistakable sense that Pakistan have arrived on their own terms.

A month later, Younis Khan makes 218 at The Oval. Pakistan win by ten wickets and finish the series 2-2.

The push-ups survive as a clip. The double-century explains something about the cricket beneath the personality. Pakistan had batters capable of occupying a match, giving their bowlers runs and time to work with. Their distinctiveness came with competitive weight.

Two years later, Abbas took eight for 64 in a nine-wicket victory at Lord’s. Pakistan drew that series 1-1. The man who opened the final morning at Edgbaston with two wickets is, therefore, more than a survivor in a struggling team. He is a living connection to a Pakistan attack that won here.

And before those drawn series came a run of success that looks increasingly remote.

Imran Khan’s Pakistan won in England in 1987, 1-0. The 1992 tourists won 2-1, with Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis at the heart of the attack. Wasim’s side won 2-0 in 1996. Three successive tours, three series victories.

Different captains, different combinations, a recognisable capacity to impose themselves.

Pakistan have now gone 30 years without another series win in England. Yet the intervening record includes drawn series in 2001, 2016 and 2018. The drought in series trophies has not been an uninterrupted drought in competition.

That is why this tour hurts beyond the result. England won the first Test by an innings and 103 runs and the second by 194 runs. Pakistan’s first five innings were 171, 135, 110, 194 and 133. Fifty wickets purchased 743 runs.

Those collapses kept the bowlers working with inadequate resources. At Edgbaston, the eventual 449 left England only 130 because Pakistan were already 320 behind. The late innings was excellent. The earlier damage explains why excellence bought so little.

Australia tells a harsher story

Pakistan drew the 1976-77 series 1-1, winning in Sydney for their first Test victory in the country. Their last Test win there came at the same ground in December 1995, in a series Australia won 2-1. By January 2024, Pakistan had lost 17 consecutive Tests in Australia.

That sequence ran through different generations. It cannot be explained by the shortcomings of the present batters or the decisions of one coaching staff. It describes an enduring failure to sustain competitive cricket in a particular environment.

The comparison with England is, therefore, revealing. Pakistan’s English decline includes the erosion of a proven capability. In Australia, the challenge has been to establish a winning capability that survives beyond an isolated Test.

And Australia has produced its own version of the Edgbaston thrill.

Sydney, January 2024. Aamer Jamal makes 82 from No. 9. Then he takes six for 69, helping Pakistan claim a first-innings lead. Here is a fast bowler making substantial runs and taking substantial wickets in the same match, forcing a much stronger home side to respond.

The resemblance to Razaullah’s debut is difficult to miss. A lower-order fast bowler makes the game larger than the scoreline that eventually contains it. Pakistan discover, or rediscover, a player to be excited about. The team still cannot assemble enough around him to win.

That is an argument for building on such performances. Dismissing them as futile would misunderstand their value. Treating them as a solution would misunderstand their limits.

Razaullah’s hitting exposed England’s difficulty in containing the lower order. Abbas’s 42 helped sustain the assault. Earlier, Shan Masood made 95, Babar Azam 76 and Azan Awais 59. Pakistan’s best innings of the series required several players to contribute, rather than a lone youngster performing a rescue.

There is something to develop in that collective resistance: the capacity to rebuild, then accelerate; to absorb damage without allowing it to decide the rest of the innings.

England demonstrated the other half of the equation. Ollie Robinson’s eight for 35 at Lord’s showed how sustained accuracy and restricted scoring could make Pakistan’s batting unravel. An attack does not need every spell to be spectacular. It needs enough deliveries that deny a batter an easy way out.

Pakistan’s own best history contains that combination of craft and surprise. Abbas belongs in it as surely as the express quicks. So do the long innings of Younis and Misbah. Reducing the country’s cricket to instinct and chaos does a disservice to the skills that made its great teams formidable.

The eccentricity is precious. The preparation makes it dangerous

This is where the romance of Pakistan cricket needs care. Audiences can love a team that makes the unexpected happen without celebrating the administrative upheaval around it. Seven players were released during this tour; coaches changed before the final Test. That instability is a different matter from a young batter deciding to take on Archer.

Jason Gillespie, a former Pakistan coach, made the connection directly: “If you want consistency on the field there needs to be consistency off the field.”

Razaullah’s freedom at the crease deserves a career in which his role is clear, his workloads are understood and one expensive spell does not become a referendum on his future. The same applies to the batters who rebuilt the innings. Sustained improvement needs more than the discovery of another exciting name.

Test cricket has a stake in that work.

A strong Pakistan makes an England tour richer and an Australian summer less predictable. It brings an audience with its own memories, heroes and arguments. It brings bowling actions a young spectator wants to imitate, celebrations that travel beyond the boundary and periods of cricket in which a match changes faster than its supposedly settled position permits.

A weak Pakistan narrows those possibilities. The fixture remains. The expectation of a contest diminishes.

Edgbaston briefly reversed that process. A No. 9 hit nine sixes. His senior bowling partner stayed with him. Then, the following morning, Abbas took two wickets before the first over was finished. Pakistan made people reconsider what might happen next.

The eventual defeat deserves a serious examination. So does the fact that, near the end of a desperately poor tour, this team could still make the ground respond.

The applause was earned. Pakistan’s task is to build a side capable of making those afternoons count across a series. Test cricket’s interest is in seeing them succeed.

England finished with the trophy. For a while, Pakistan had the ground.