Devendra Bishoo comes around the wicket to bowl the last ball of the 79th over as the Pakistani tail toils to set a respectable target. Facing him is the home side’s sensational bowler Mohammad Amir, who has just recently impressed with a record 28-ball 58 against England at Nottingham hours after Pakistan had been bludgeoned by 444 runs. The Pakistan fans have their hopes high as Wahab Riaz stands at the other end.

Bishoo in search of the rough spot bowls his stock delivery. Amir astonishes with a fluent blow down the ground, putting his front foot in the line of the ball in the process to send it up, up and away. Satisfied with his shot, Amir walks down the wicket to exchange some words with his partner. 

However, Roston Chase saves a certain six and keeps the ball alive with his heroic backward dive. The lanky spinner throws the ball to the non-striker’s end. Caught by surprise, Amir hastens down the wicket. He drops his bat on his way and gets run out by a fair distance as the Windies captain Jason Holder dislodges the bails.

Amir’s run out indicated Pakistan’s complacency at Sharjah

The episode goes down as an umpteenth soft dismissal while Amir and Pakistan continue to show complacent behaviour after attaining an unassailable series lead in the previous match. 

For those who missed out the visitors’ absorbing victory at Sharjah, an action replay of this comical run out is enough to explain how Pakistan spent their last five days of the tour.

Ranked number two at the toss of the third and final Test, Pakistan were anticipated to run over a low-ranked West Indies. Having not conceded a Test series in the United Arab Emirates for the past six years and being crowned as the number one Test side recently demanded an impeccable display. But complacency got the better of a rather invincible Test side. Pakistan not only lost a chance of bagging another whitewash series victory in the desert, they also lost two crucial ratings in Test rankings. 

To the surprise of many, Pakistan’s head coach Mickey Arthur termed fatigue the reason behind his side’s dismal batting performances in the Sharjah match. Pakistan put up a paltry 281 and 208, which set up a comfortable 154-run target for the Windies after the latter scored 337 in their first innings. 

“We didn’t meet our standards but I can’t fault the players,” said the South African coach after Pakistan sent half of the Windies batting line-up back into the pavilion and the visitors required another 39 runs before they could register their first Test win in 18 months. “They have been here for eight weeks now after having a 10-day break following very long UK tour. And it was almost mission accomplished for us before this Test match.

“Maybe a bit of fatigue has crept into our performance. We really wanted to win every Test match, every game we play, and this game is not over by any stretch of the imagination. We would like to be more clinical and it’s a pity that we got ourselves into this situation, but we still can get ourselves out of this.”

The West Indies started the final day of the match with a crashing boundary off Riaz. They took less than eight overs to finish the proceedings without surrendering another wicket. The commentators termed the loss a wakeup call for Misbah’s men before the all-important tours of New Zealand and Australia. 

In the wake of such a pitiful performance that took everyone aback, the Pakistan skipper’s post-match talk was refreshingly realistic and engendered a feeling that hopefully the mistakes of the Sharjah Test would not be repeated in the coming tours. 

“When you are the No 1 or No 2 team, you have to play every match at a certain standard to keep that reputation,” said Misbah.

The writer tweets @ahsannagi

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 13th, 2016