Although the end of the day revealed a clearer image of the two teams, for a little while this Test was all about this fast bowler
Danyal Rasool01-Sep-2024One of cricket’s recent contributions to viral online discourse is the image of an amateur batter holding the pose, having ostensibly played the perfect straight drive. It isn’t until the next frame that you see the stumps completely askew, bails up in the air with the ball having freshly clattered into them. A picture may speak a thousand words, but is also equipped to conceal at least as many.Sometimes, as any coach – or medical professional – recognises, the truth doesn’t matter as much as what’s needed to keep those under their watch going. Dwelling upon the full picture of what transpired on the third day of the second Test is unlikely to do Pakistan many favours. Khurram Shahzad would much rather have the first hour of the morning framed and hung up, a snapshot in time that will sustain him far more than any sober analysis of how things turned pear-shaped.For as a new-ball spell, it was one of the greats. Seeing the movement on offer, Shahzad pitched it up and brought it back in, drawing a false shot to draw first blood. His captain Shan Masood had pointed out last week Pakistan had never taken wickets in clumps, allowing Bangladesh to bat nearly 170 overs in the first innings. Perhaps it was a gauntlet thrown down. On Sunday morning, Shahzad took it up.Related
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Looking to capitalise on that inward movement to the left-handers, he plugged away in that corridor of uncertainty until eventually he scrambled Shadman Islam’s sense of space. Moving across to head off the swing, the Bangladesh opener would end up exposing his stumps, the ball managing just enough zip to clip the top of leg. That sort of dismissal always looks like a batting mistake instead of a bowling plan, but there’s a reason Shadman was so far across in the first place.”The surface was more helpful than the first Test,” Shahzad said in the press conference at the end of day three. “The first session was ours because we were taking wickets in bunches. When it swings, it helps us a lot.”And Shahzad was accepting that assistance with both hands. After all, what’s better than thudding into leg stump? Knocking back middle, of course. And did he hear the captain wanted two quick wickets? How about three? With the swing still there, Shahzad honed in on off, letting the ball do what it was doing. Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto had perhaps still been shaking off the early morning cobwebs when the first two lefties were dismissed, for he unwisely tried to flick across the line to midwicket. The ball slipped in between bat and pad, cutting him in two with the ease of a knife slicing through butter. Middle stump, just like Bangladesh, was in tatters.The finishing brushstrokes on this masterpiece were applied, and by now Shahzad was displaying his versatility. Coming around the wicket and using his wrist position to maximise the movement back in, he had Shakib Al Hasan falling over as he was rapped on the knee roll; Bangladesh were 26 for 6. Shahzad had provided the clump of wickets Pakistan wanted to force a quick result. ESPNcricinfo’s Statsguru was fired up throughout the press room; Bangladesh’s lowest totals got plenty of hits. The TV graphics reminded viewers Pakistan needed only a 150-run lead to enforce the follow-on. There may have been more to the story, but Shahzad’s picture was complete.Khurram Shahzad caught Mehidy Hasan Miraz off his own bowling for his maiden Test five-for•AFP/Getty ImagesPitches flatten out, balls get old, and photographs fade into distant, hazy memories. There are limitations in Shahzad’s game, and indeed the remainder of this Pakistan attack so uncharacteristically and curiously bereft of pace; the fastest bowler this Test has been Naseem Shah on the practice pitches. And when conditions ceased to offer as much assistance, Shahzad, by his own admission, turned to damage limitation.”But when it wasn’t swinging, we were trying to contain them and not give runs away,” Shahzad said. “We were waiting for the batter to make mistakes when their partnership was flowing. We were making sure we were disciplined with the ball. The beauty of Test cricket is momentum keeps switching hands.”By the afternoon, the desperation had become palpable. Pakistan placed six men on the onside as Shahzad went around the wicket to the right-handers, banging the ball in short in a fairly transparent attempt to squeeze a miscue to the keeper or perhaps fine leg. But Bangladesh knew it was a bluff; Shahzad simply didn’t possess the speed to trouble them this way, and Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Litton Das went about demonstrating this in the most public way. Each would pick Shahzad up and deposit him over the very fielders Pakistan had placed on the boundary, their only involvement being a perfect view as the ball sailed over their heads. Bangladesh were steamrolling towards parity.Shahzad would find more success soon, but only after he recognised he was better off doing what his arsenal allowed. A routine, unflashy ball on good length that may just have held up in the pitch was chipped up by Mehidy, letting the bowler snaffle the opportunity that had fallen his way, and the five-for that came with it. Having created his own momentum, Shahzad – just as he had done in the morning – capitalised on it, turning one wicket into two, and five into six.What happened in between, and as Bangladesh’s tail frustrated Pakistan for another couple of hours, may not show up in Shahzad’s album. And he may feel he has the right to keep them out of sight, because he needs no further reminder of adversity. While Pakistan moved on from a series whitewash against Australia, focusing on the white-ball summer and the T20 World Cup to come, Shahzad was battling back from the cruellest of body blows.After making his debut in Perth last December and acquitting himself reasonably well, a short PCB update informed us he was out of the series with an injury. A niggle carried over from the Quaid-e-Azam trophy the previous month turned into a rib stress fracture and an abdominal muscle tear, ruling him out for months. Stress fractures are notoriously difficult to come back from unscathed. The sight of Shahzad dominating the first hour of a Test match isn’t just the story of a moving ball, but an insight into the resilience of a man who needs no documentation for proof of his hard work.But while cricket will find rich ways of rewarding its most committed, it also has a mischievous sense of humour. Sent in as nightwatchman after Pakistan lost Abdullah Shafique early, Shahzad squared up to a Hasan Mahmud beauty which just shaped away and knocked his off stump back. Michael Gough dislodged the bails at the opposite end, and on a day Shahzad had spent rattling timber, the last image captured him on the receiving end. “I tried to see the day out, but unfortunately I got out,” he smiled.Best leave that out of the picture, too.
