Salman century seals Pakistan dominance in Multan
Pakistan v England, Multan — Day 2
PAKISTAN 556 all out
ENGLAND 96–1 (trail by 460 runs)
After just 90 minutes sleep and following the glitz and the glamour of Yankee Stadium (and a pleasing 4–2 defeat of the home team by the visiting “Royals” of Kansas City) the 6am shrill of the alarm clock transported me back once more to Multan and as the steady drizzle of a cold, dark English morning juxtaposed beautifully with the early morning Pakistan sunshine that demanded my sleepy attention, the morning session was as damp and cold as the English weather and “not epic viewing” according to ex England captain Michael Atherton. With Pakistan scoring just 69 runs for the loss of 2 wickets one could only agree with the affectionately known “Athers” and at 397–6 at the Lunch Break, the home team were firmly in the box seats but in a match largely going nowhere fast. It was a sobering session of cricket in many ways for an England team frustrated for nearly 100 minutes by nightwatchman Naseem Shah as he obstinately refused to give his wicket away cheaply, and not before tabling 33 outstanding runs to his team’s total. The morning expectation for England would have been to dismiss Shah early ahead of putting pressure on Pakistan’s last remaining batsman Mohammad Rizwan with only the “tail” of the innings for company. Quixotically, and on a morning in need of such fanciful interventions, England snagged both wickets, Rizwan for a 12 ball duck too, but not before Shah had doggedly kept Saud Shakeel company for almost the entirety of the opening session, with Shakeel advancing his 35 not out total overnight to 67 not out as he rested at the Lunch Break.
The afternoon session could have belonged to England fast bowler Brydon Carse as he added a second Test Match wicket to his first ever and the eventual dismissal of Naseem Shah before the break, should have belonged to Saud Shakeel but who only added a further 15 runs to his pre-Lunch total of 67 before Shoaib Bashir spun a gem of a delivery that snagged the outside of his bat and into the grateful hands of Joe Root at Slip, but which unequivocally belonged to Pakistan as a team and particularly spin bowler Salman Ali Agha. 118 runs were added in this session by a dominant home team to take their score at the Tea interval to 515–8 and of those 118 runs, 79 were inked in the score book against Salman Ali Agha. The 30 year old from Lahore received a surreal cricketing “life” when on just 15 as Chris Woakes juggled a spectacular catch on the boundary edge to dismiss him only for the TV umpire to over rule the on field decision. From here, Salman glided effortlessly to a 71 ball half century and when in attack mode, defiantly smashed Jack Leach for repeated 4’s and 6’s to rest at the Tea Break 21 short of a Test Match century, a milestone he’d reach in a “bizarre” final session of play according to ex England skipper Nasser Hussain, and even a sleepy fellow Englishman thousands of miles away watching the pitter-patter of late morning rain stream down the windowpanes.
After nearly two days in the field England resembled a ragged outfit completely out on their collective feet and so it was little wonder that for 30 or so minutes as the Pakistan innings finally came to a close that an air of the bizarre descended on the Multan International Cricket Stadium. With the completion of Salman’s century (from just 108 balls received), the half an hour of madness commenced with Shaheen Afridi, now free from the shackles of helping his partner reach a Test Match century, playing an ugly cross batted swipe to a straight delivery from Jack Leach that crashed into his middle stump, England wicket-keeper Jamie Smith missed an easy stumping chance, Gus Atkinson dropped an even easier sky high catch he barely laid a finger on before the innings closed with a sharp catch taken by Ben Duckett that appears, at the time of writing, to have dislocated his thumb. If all this calamity wasn’t bizarre enough for the tourists, stand-in skipper Ollie Pope had to deputise for his injured opening batsman and promptly crashed the second delivery he received into the flying hands of Aamir Jamal and his team were already 4–1 in just the second over of the innings.
It’s therefore to the immense credit of Zak Crawley (64 not out) and Joe Root (32 not out) that England, after two long days in the blistering Multan sunshine, ended the day without any further chaos or tumbling of wickets to finish on 96–1, still a mammoth 460 runs behind. Honours after Day 2 reside with a resilient and reinvigorated Pakistan under new coach Jason Gillespie who knows a thing or two about beating England! But the tourists’ task tomorrow is a simple one, at least on paper: multiple centurions are needed to match those of their hosts and come the end of Day 3, it could be honours even and two tired teams looking for a Day 5 match winner.
All of which is for the future, as mine should be immediate sleep before cheering on my LA Dodgers in a must-win game of baseball in San Diego.
But sleep is so overrated, don’t you think?
See you tomorrow!
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.