“I entered the Oval ground with a strong determination to win,” writes Fazal Mahmood in his autobiography From Dusk to Dawn, which was published in 2003. He was talking about 1954, but even after the passage of nearly half a century, his memory of the Oval triumph was still vivid. Recounting the action blow by blow, Fazal tells a tale that has become folklore. “Len Hutton could not read my in-cutters or leg-cutters,” he notes, as the narrative reaches the point where England are starting their final innings of the match needing 168 to win.

You have to place yourself inside Fazal’s head to get the full flavour.

Here he is, on an overcast August afternoon, opening the bowling for Pakistan on the country’s inaugural tour of England. He is playing only his ninth Test match, which also happens to be Pakistan’s ninth. He is 27 years old. These are early days for Pakistan; the country itself is only seven years old.

There was a series in India a year and a half earlier, which marked Pakistan’s debut as a Test nation. It was lost 2-1, but not before Fazal, in the second Test at Lucknow, took 12 for 94. When Pakistan batted, his team-mate Nazar Mohammad carried his bat for 124. Their combined effort brought victory by an innings and 43 runs.

Between Lucknow and the Oval there have been seven other Tests, producing two losses and five draws. It would be nice to get another Test victory, but winning in England seems rather an audacious dream.

Pakistan is already trailing 1-0 in this series, after losing the opening Test at Trent Bridge by an innings. Even the best teams find it difficult to come from behind and equalise a Test rubber. To top it all, this is no ordinary opposition but England, the finest team in the world, with the added advantage that it is playing at home. Until recently, they had been colonial superiors. The psychological edge cannot be ignored.

In these solemn circumstances, Fazal turns at the top of his bowling mark and looks down his run-up and across the pitch at Hutton. In achievement and stature, the man is a batting colossus, the equivalent in his time of today’s Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting all merged into one. If Fazal was overawed, you cannot detect it from his account. “I decided to bowl that special concealed ball,” he continues, “knowing that if I were to miss, I would not be able to tame the lion.”

As the scorecard confirms, he did not miss. The ball invited Hutton to play into the covers, but it was a devilishly placed leg-cutter and he nicked it behind the stumps to Imtiaz. That injected Fazal with the self-belief that he could do it. And he did, eventually dismissing England 24 runs short. Fazal had taken 12 for 99 in the match and he savoured his success from the balcony of the Oval pavilion, serenaded by loud cheers and applause that resonate in the minds of Pakistan supporters to this day.

For even now, when you say “Oval Test,” most people know exactly what you mean. That victory, arguably Pakistan’s most celebrated conquest in Tests, proved a great omen and marked the Oval as one of Pakistan’s favourite hunting grounds. Even the Darrell Hair affair in 2006 has not been able to sully the richness of Pakistan’s happy Oval memories. The ground is as old as Test cricket itself, having hosted the first-ever Test match on English soil, between England and Australia in 1880, and being the venue where the legend of the Ashes was born, in 1882. Lacking the stiff upper of Lord’s, London’s other Test venue, the Oval’s common-man character is also more in keeping with Pakistan’s down-to-earth temperament.

In eight Tests at this venue, Pakistan has won three, lost three, and drawn two. The other two wins came in 1992, when the hero was Wasim Akram, and in 1996, when Saeed Anwar and Salim Malik made centuries and Mushtaq Ahmed became man of the match for taking eight decisive wickets. The draws in 1974, when Zaheer Abbas made 240, and 1987, which saw Javed Miandad in his element amassing 260, are no less memorable. Even one of Pakistan’s defeats at the Oval carries a famously inspiring footnote. In 1967, Asif Iqbal (146) and Intikhab Alam (51) put together 190 for the ninth wicket here, a world record that stood for 30 years. And although the Oval Test of 2006 was sacrificed to a forfeit, let us not forget that cricket-wise Pakistan had England in a stranglehold when the match was called off.

In ODI matches, Pakistan’s record at the Oval is sketchy, with one win from seven games, but buried within the defeats is one of the greatest partnerships in Pakistan’s ODI history. In the semi-final of the 1979 World Cup, Zaheer Abbas and Majid Khan stroked their way to a 166-run second wicket partnership here as Pakistan tried to topple the invincible West Indies. It wasn’t enough, but for a while it had seemed as if it might be, and the memory of that incredible feeling endures. Pakistan also has two victories from three Twenty20 matches at the Oval, all of them part of the 2009 world championship that Pakistan won.

Undoubtedly, the Oval has been good to Pakistan. The question of the moment is, will it continue to extend its warm welcome? By the time you read this, the Oval Test of the current series will be four days old.

Has our current team been able to put in a performance that can live up to Pakistan’s impressive legacy at this venue? Has someone stepped forward and scored a double-hundred, like Zaheer and Miandad did in decades past? Did a pair of motivated newcomers take the game by the scruff of the neck, like Asif and Intikhab did in 1967? Did our overworked seam attack dig deeper yet into unknown reserves of skill and stamina to reproduce what Fazal pulled off in 1954, what Wasim Akram did in 1992?

The heart keeps waiting for miracles, but the mind knows better. Most likely, by now the match is over and there has been another humiliating loss. Pakistan’s campaign is floundering. Mohammad Yousuf has been recalled but he hardly had an opportunity to prepare. Meanwhile, Younis Khan, Pakistan’s only other proper Test batsman, continues to be victimised by a preposterous PCB. There is no coherence in our cricket affairs, no merit in our selection, no plan or strategy in the way we are approaching the game. The facts are stark and unavoidable.

The heart may be pumping full of hope and anticipation, but the mind is resigned and stoic.