Multan Test in a spin and the curious case of Salman Ali Agha

Pakistan v England, Multan — Day 3

Oct 17, 2024

Picture courtesy of and with great thanks to **www.twitter.com/therealpcb**

PAKISTAN 366 and 221
ENGLAND 291 and 36–2 (261 runs needed to win)

Act One: From New York with love (and Bengaluru and Multan)

Watching sport through the night, night after cold English night, is a hobby truly for the foolhardy and best left to the professionals. Lesser mortals will become easily discombobulated at the shrill of an alarm clock their sleep addled mind tricks them to believe they set for tomorrow even though it was in fact yesterday, now, at just past midnight, and all they can think of is raspberry jam on toast, a first cup of tea for the day and will Shohei Ohtani crash a home run in New York later? The walls begin to bend after consecutive days and nights of 90 minutes fitful sleep and the mind chatter of wondering if I’ve ever watched my baseball team in the same October month as a touring England cricket team, why is the recent film “The Substance” still rolling around my mind, why do I continue to torture myself with a social media race to the bottom and perhaps most importantly of all, do I have enough tea bags to see me through the night? Questions such as these come easily at the witching hour of a brand new yesterday before the dawn of a new tomorrow and luckily for all concerned, I’m a professional.

It wasn’t until Shohei Ohtani settled my pre-game nerves with a laser shot into the upper deck of the New York Mets Citi Field stadium in the 8th inning that I could finally relax. It was, after all, the Los Angeles Dodgers in their usual month of baseball heartbreak. Even winning 4–0 at this point and never in any danger of losing their supremacy I still couldn’t fully relax until this season’s darling and record breaker crushed a rocket high over the foul pole, sending New Yorkers scurrying for the exits and the sanctity of a warm home. They’ll be back this evening, as will I tomorrow morning, but I still can’t fathom whether or not I’ve watched England on an overseas cricket tour at the same time as my Los Angeles Dodgers are only a couple of wins from the World Series. As I say, questions such as these come easy to a mind drifting in and out of an earthly dimension whilst seemingly lucid dreaming of jam on toast and another cup of tea as it’s now 4.45am and only 15 minutes from the start time in Bengaluru for the India/New Zealand Test Match, and who needs sleep anyway?

Who indeed. I’d suggest the Indian cricket team are in dire need of some sleep this evening after being bowled all out for just 46 by a rampant New Zealand team that have already rampaged past them to end their particular day of Test Match cricket 134 runs to the good and with 7 wickets still standing. I left the sunshine of Bengaluru for the heat haze of Multan and after the first session in Pakistan returned back across the neighbouring border to the bewildering sight of a home team on the sporting rack at 34–6 before an immediate wicket saw this become 34–7, then 46–9 by the time I returned once more to cricketing affairs between Pakistan and England. Word soon filtered through the grapevine of a monumental collapse from the second best Test Match team in the world, and on home soil too, leaving ex England captain and all round good egg Michael Atherton to remark “Welcome to my World”, a beautifully sarcastic jibe at himself and the humbling and exact 46 all out scored by his England team in Port of Spain in 1994, a match and nightmare finish I remember all too well but not perhaps as well as our man in Multan who’d rather forget it all happened! Oh how we could reminisce and recall in the mind’s eye big bad Curtly Ambrose roaring in time and again to send England batsmen back to the pavilion after smashing their off stump cartwheeling in the air behind them, but as we’ve returned to Multan, shall we start at the beginning of a day’s play that sees England seriously staring down the barrel of defeat and Pakistan ready to celebrate a home win for the first time in two long years?

Act Two: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”

The grand old game of Test Match cricket has always bent to the whims of statistical analysis as well as the stories and tall tales of a sport with its own language, rhythm and peculiarities. Take the opening session for example. Pakistan began the day with a healthy 127 run lead that was reduced by 52 runs in 55 minutes and the fall of the final 4 England wickets. They therefore commenced their second innings with a final, if reduced lead of 75 runs that 55 minutes later had climbed back to 118 runs but for the loss of 3 wickets. In the strange statistical manner of this grandest game of all they were in fact 43–3 on second innings but overall, if not officially, 118–3 and again unofficially and only making sense to fans of the game, they’d seen their lead reduced by 9 runs and lost their 3 opening wickets too. If that isn’t confusing and convoluted enough we also have the stories to tell that pepper this magnificent game along its elongated and merry way too.

Reversing the batting order now, England may have only scored 52 runs but 34 of those came courtesy of their final two batsmen Jack Leach and Shoaib Bashir, both in the team as bowlers rather batsmen and without whose tenacity and fight with the bat would have seen the visitors crumble to an embarrassing and quick early morning demise. Leach scored 25 compared to Bashir’s 9 but the 21 year old would pick up all 3 Pakistan wickets to fall before the Lunch Break for another of the day’s continuing cricket stories. But the story and indeed statistics of the morning fell to 31 year old Sajid Khan on his return to the Pakistan team. The man with the upside down Salvador Dali moustache and competitive spirit to burn finished with figures of 7 wickets for 111 runs notable both for its sporting excellence and cricketing history as well as the poetic language that runs through the veins of the game. Khan cuts a figure of a caged, angry lion, forever bouncing, prowling, and staring down his prey. There are smiles and jokes aplenty too as he’s clearly determined to cement his position in the Pakistan team and enjoy the ride of a return to the national team, aptly demonstrated by breaking an 11 year old record for the best bowling figures against England in the 1st innings as well as the almost quarter of a century old record for the best 1st innings bowling figures for a Pakistani on home soil. Then there are the runs conceded — 111, a figure commonly referred to in cricket as “Nelson” and a particularly unlucky number at that.

But not today and not for Sajid Khan, whose “story” for the day still had a chapter or two yet to be written.

The afternoon session belonged largely to a Pakistan team who added a further 91 runs for the loss of 2 wickets to rest at the Tea Break on 134–5 and an overall lead of 209 runs. England pressed, their backs to the wall. Jack Leach and Brydon Carse accounted for Kamran Ghulam and Mohammed Rizwan respectively, but Saud Shakeel stood firm on 30 not out at the break together with Salman Ali Agha and it’s to the 30 year old from Lahore and scorer of both a century and half century in the first Test Match to which we must turn as the statistical oddities and stories of the grand old game rest squarely on his shoulders and those of an England team who looked rather jaded, deflated and bedraggled at the break.

Dropped catches tend to sting, especially in a tight game such as this.

Act Three: The curious case of Salman Ali Agha

With 30 or so minutes remaining of the afternoon session the Test Match was arguably in the balance with England needing 5 more wickets to dismiss a Pakistan team nearing a lead of 200 runs. Then in the space of 2 runs and 2 balls England presented Salman Ali Agha with not one but yes, you’ve guessed it, two “lives” with two dropped catches, and from 4 not out he’d eventually notch his 9th Test Match half century in the evening session before finally being dismissed for 63 in a larger partnership of 65 with Sajid Khan (yes, that man again) who chipped in with an eventual 22 further valuable runs. Brydon Carse was the unlucky England bowler, his frustration met squarely with that of his captain Ben Stokes who clearly feared the worst for his tired and dejected team and the possible future cost of these extra lives. Hypothetical and subjective it may be, but had England taken any one of these two quick fire catches they may have restricted Pakistan to a lead barely over 200 rather than 4 short of 300 and if we deduct Salman’s additional 59 runs after his 2 cricketing lives, they would have been chasing 238 runs to win rather than 297.

How costly these 59 runs will prove to be only time will tell.

With 1st innings centurion Ben Duckett dismissed even before the Barmy Army had finished their ritualistic rendition of “Jerusalem” and Zak Crawley following him to the Pavilion a handful of runs later, it fell to vice captain Ollie Pope (21 not out) and ex captain Joe Root (12 not out) to inch England to stumps on 36–2 and on this viciously spinning and turning low bouncing wicket still a far away and nigh on impossible 261 runs from victory. The statistics and stories of the game dictate only one winner from here as no team has scored more than 262 runs to win in the 4th innings since Pakistan did this very thing in 2003 and if England pull off a near miracle for victory, it will be their largest win batting last in Asia for over 6 decades.

England coach Paul Collingwood was honest enough to admit after today’s play: “We have done some special things in the past, broken records, but we’ve got to be realistic that it will be a tough, tough chase.”

A tough chase it shall be!

What statistics and stories will be written tomorrow?