‘Is this real life Or is this just fantasy?’

Published November 30, 2014
The tried-and-tested team
The tried-and-tested team

On November 23, 2014, “Bohemian Rhapsody” turned 40, but Pakistani fans have been humming the opening bars of this epic song by the British band Queen, quoted above, for over a month already.

So many records have been broken since October 22, the first day of the Test series versus Australia that recounting all of them almost feels kitschy. Considering that most of these records have been broken by Pakistan’s much-maligned batting line-up that feeling of kitsch descends into vulgarity. Consecutive declarations, consecutive hundreds, hundreds in each innings, oldest captain and fastest centurion — it has all been a bit overwhelming.

But what has really put these eye-watering stats into the realm of miracles is that they were not made against minnows, but against a team that an entire generation of Pakistanis had received nothing but mental scars from. Twenty years had passed since Pakistan had beaten Australia in a Test series, and during that time the team had not won a single live Test while bearing innumerable thrashings. What’s more, Pakistan had come into this series in the midst of a(nother) crippling captaincy debate and a demoralising whitewash in the limited overs games. Oh, and their best player had been banned on the eve of the tour.

The only explanation then for such resounding victories seemed to be a miracle — the sort where heavenly agents aid righteous armies from the sky — yet a detailed analysis reveals that (notwithstanding the coming together of certain specific circumstances) Pakistan’s wins were down to the good old virtues of planning and processes.


The recent Tests series in which Pakistan enjoyed great outings against strong sides brings to light many of the things working for the Green Shirts, which the Pakistan Cricket Board can take advantage of during the forthcoming World Cup


Doing the tried-and-tested

One reason that the recent run of victories has felt so unprecedented is that it has been achieved through the success of our procedures and institutions — exactly the sort of things that we love to complain about in Pakistan. For starters, the Pakistan team had an absolutely unknown and inexperienced bowling line-up, yet they all possessed sufficient quality and character to adapt to Test cricket immediately. None of Zulfiqar Babar, Yasir Shah, Rahat Ali, Imran Khan (and later Ehsan Adil) displayed nerves in their baptism by fire, taking to the game and its nuances with natural ease. Unlike famous examples of the past, they weren’t untested youngsters but instead players who had put in a lot of time in the domestic game. Their quality and approach spoke volumes of the level of cricketer being produced by the much maligned domestic set-up.

Happy skipper Misbah
Happy skipper Misbah

Tactically, Misbah’s side has developed a formula of playing at the UAE which has made the destination into a fortress. Again, this is down to patient, reactive, procedural cricket rather than flashes of inspiration. I have previously described this approach as the ‘slow-spin-strangle’, and it basically involves batting slowly and patiently, and then using a phalanx of spinners to first dry the runs and then pick up wickets. It sounds painfully simple, and rests heavily upon the taxing playing conditions of the UAE, but it works. It makes the best use of Pakistan’s talents in bowling while protecting a notoriously fragile batting line-up.

Finally, perhaps the biggest difference was the long-term stability of the middle order, which meant that it was able to be as prolific as it was. Azhar, Younis, Misbah and Shafiq have been at the heart of the team’s batting for most of Misbah’s era, and they came into this series knowing exactly how to bat in the conditions.

The coach

Misbah’s slow-spin-strangle had delivered a way of being strong at home, but after the iconic Greenwash of England in 2012, the team’s results had stagnated terribly under new coach Dav Whatmore. Pakistan did not win a single Test series under Whatmore, including the drawn series versus South Africa and Sri Lanka at home and most gallingly, Zimbabwe away. The return of Waqar Younis as his replacement started badly as a rusty Pakistan threw away a series to Sri Lanka, but the return to the UAE had the team playing at the peak of its potential.

One quip heard in the press box after the first Test versus Australia was that you could pick four boys off the street (gully ke launday) and Waqar could whip them into a Test quality attack. Pakistan’s bowling was relentlessly impressive, and used their skills with devastating efficiency. The contrast with the clueless Australian bowling was stark, and the arrival of the harder-working Kiwis showed how poor their neighbours had been. The efforts of the backroom staff, including Mushtaq Ahmed with the spinners and Grant Flower with the batsmen, was something the players also referred to a lot, and spoke of good management realising results.

Younis Khan ... best Pakistani batsman of all time?
Younis Khan ... best Pakistani batsman of all time?

Misbah’s ODI side has faced far more challenges, and recorded much less success, than the Test side and there are many questions that will still be unanswered when the World Cup begins early next year.


The game changers

The first Test win against New Zealand meant that Misbah-ul-Haq became the most ‘winningest’ Pakistan Test captain of all time. Pax Misbannica has now yielded 15 Test wins, but its standout narrative has been how the team emerged from the embers of the fixing scandal as a hardworking side with no real stars. The three wins against Australia and New Zealand were all achieved with just about every member chipping in; yet two players were decisive in their impact.

The first was the pugnacious Sarfaraz Ahmed, who finally seems to be achieving his potential. After making his mark in the remarkable Sharjah chase against Sri Lanka in January, Sarfaraz’s emergence provided a much-needed stability to the batting. Suddenly, the players above him felt far more confident and it showed in their batting. But more important was his ability to turn matches around — his brilliant lower-order 100 against Australia took Pakistan to a total that eventually overwhelmed their opponents, while his remarkable 100 against New Zealand, largely scored with the tail for company, killed off the Kiwis’ chances of forcing a win.

The second game changer was Younis Khan, a man who over the course of a month changed the speculation surrounding him from concerning his retirement to whether he was the best Pakistani batsmen of all time. Younis was the rock around which Pakistan’s batting prospered, and continued his tradition of notching up defiant hundreds whenever he’s doubted by the selectors. His efforts deserve far more praise, but the simplest way to put it is that none of these results would have happened without him.

Terrible tourists

For all the hoopla about Australia’s Test record against Pakistan in the past two decades, there were several caveats to be made. The team has historically had a poor record in Asia, and had not played a Test on Pakistani soil since 1998. They had not played Pakistan even in the UAE, playing the last ‘home’ series against them in England. Crucially, they hadn’t faced Pakistan’s spinners once since the umpire decision referral system (UDRS) became regular in cricket.

But what really rankled was the tourists’ heads-in-the-sand approach — Australia arrived with only a Plan A and refused to budge from it at any point, despite the losses. What was worse is that some of their players and almost all of their press followed that up with moaning and whining about conditions in another country being different from the ones they were used to. They kept turning to pacers who didn’t know how to use the pitch, and refused to trust their spinners. Their batsmen kept batting aggressively even after their captain, Michael Clarke, acknowledged that batting in the UAE required a ‘bedding-in’ period in each innings. There was also an almost insulting lack of honest analysis surrounding the games, with refrains of ‘dead pitches’ and ‘batsmen missing straighter ones’ from the Australian camp. The fact that Australia’s recent record in Asia has been atrocious and that they were completely outclassed in every department, including fielding, was something that was brought up belatedly.

Coach Waqar Younis ... can he make anyone a winner?
Coach Waqar Younis ... can he make anyone a winner?

In truth, Australia’s batsmen were poor against the spinners, lacking any release shots and being terrible in the use of their feet. Their pacers didn’t pick up wickets with the reverse swing they generated — something that even the debutant Imran Khan showed them up on — while their spinners lacked the quality and confidence required. Moreover, they were continuously impatient — Michael Clarke’s much lauded ‘funky’ captaincy seemed more like a declaration of defeat. Rather than being aggressive, they seemed to imply that he had run out of faith in his bowlers to do the basics well.

The contrast was truly shown when the Kiwis came to town. The first Test saw more or less an exact replica of the Australian ones, but in the second the tourists made full use of winning the toss and making Pakistan bat last for the first time in four tests. Tom Latham’s patient approach and quality handling of Pakistan’s defacto leader of the attack, Zulfiqar Babar, made him the best touring batsman on display so far. But the rest of the team also displayed remarkable grit and tenacity. The only exception was their captain Brendon McCullum, who batted with the same flawed approach of the Australians, but it was his declaration and clever, patient use of bowlers which gave his team a chance of winning.

What both touring sides particularly suffered from was the lack of quality spinners, which allowed Pakistan’s batting several escapes. Statistically, Pakistan’s approach of batting slowly had stopped yielding dividends after the England series, and South Africa and Sri Lanka both recorded wins by being able to pick up wickets with their spinners after Pakistan’s batting had played out a lot of overs without many runs. In the recent matches though, the team was able to pace itself perfectly — starting slowly before attacking a side left wilting in the heat. Moreover, Pakistan’s own bowlers were repeatedly able to come back into an innings after a partnership had been established.

In conclusion then, Pakistan’s hat-trick of Test wins was down to the fact that they played to their limited strengths exceptionally well, while their opponents lacked the will and/or the skills to defeat them. Most importantly, in an era where Test sides are becoming increasingly weaker, Misbah’s team showed the value of patience and grit in achieving results. Rather than being proactive for the sake of it, or pursuing aggression as some sort of ideology, Misbah’s side stuck to their plans and had faith in pulling them off.

Looking ahead

There is now going to be a clamour to not only view these victories as a fortuitous harbinger ahead of the World Cup, but also to reward success in the longer format with spots in the limited overs side. Yet the truth is that Misbah’s ODI side has faced far more challenges, and recorded much less success, than the Test side and there are many questions that will still be unanswered when the World Cup begins early next year. Indeed, a string of poor results during the Third Test and/or the subsequent limited overs matches could mean that the conversation is completely different a month from now. So far, the only reliable certainty is that Younis Khan will almost definitely return to the squad, and despite the flawed logic behind that impending decision, there is some sense to it.

More important questions remain unresolved though — the identity of the openers, the availability of both Hafeez and Ajmal after their chucking issues, the return of several pacers, the question of playing Yasir Shah or Afridi as the leg-spinner, the balance between the stodgier batsmen versus the flashy ones, and many others. Given that we have seen success in another format and that so much can change in Pakistan between then and now, it’s best to defer these questions for now. For the moment, let us revel in the warm afterglow of a truly remarkable and memorable set of wins for Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 30th, 2014

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