It took England an hour and a half on the final day to complete an extraordinary and historic victory over Pakistan in the first Test, in the process becoming the first side to concede as many as 500 runs at the start of a match and still win it by an innings. The hosts were eventually dismissed for 220, the margin of victory an innings and 47 runs.
The game ended with two wickets in four balls for Jack Leach, starting with him brilliantly catching Shaheen Shah Afridi off his own bowling to 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, but this time he missed, leaving Jamie Smith to complete a straightforward stumping. With Abrar Ahmed having been hospitalised with a fever on Wednesday evening and still there as the game reached its conclusion, Pakistan’s innings was at an end.
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 games 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 day they had scored 556 at a leisurely 3.73 an over and an England victory seemed unlikely to the point of outlandishness. As their reply began they had one opener nursing a dislocated thumb, another playing for the first time in over two months because of a broken finger, 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.
Aamer Jamal and Salman Agha ended the chaos with a partnership of 109, 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 on 32 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 scoring another 63 to become the only player to impress with the bat twice.
These were difficult moments but 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 them. Notably 53% of Salman’s second-innings runs came from fours, compared with 38% in the first, and despite the fact that he was being significantly less aggressive. Despite those boundaries his strike rate dipped from 87.39 to 75.
after newsletter promotion
Once he went Pakistan shifted to carefree if not particularly successful slogging, with horrific defeat inevitable. Ollie Pope dropped a straightforward catching chance at square leg after Jamal skied a pull. It was too late for it to make any difference. A mark of Pakistan’s failure here, and England’s achievement: only one team in Test history has scored more than Pakistan’s total of 556 in their first innings and gone on to lose – that was Australia against England in 1894, and they only lost by 10 runs.
