Aaqib-ball sparks Pakistan’s latest revolution

He glanced across at the surface two strips across. It would host the second Test. Under the blazing Multan sun, which hadn’t let up all game, the surface had a veneer that made it look like a sheet of glass; Dar could have combed his beard in the reflection. He looked back at the used pitch, dry as a tinder box waiting for a spark. The seed of an idea was beginning to form in his mind.

Giant industrial fans were brought in over the weekend to dry the surface out in an effort to induce spin as early as possible. The only problem? Pakistan’s only spinner was still in hospital with suspected dengue fever, and so the selection panel soon put their sweeping powers to good use.

Privately, some of the selectors wondered if three spinners was overkill, but Aaqib was adamant; this was the way forward. Aaqib has become the public face of this selectorial coup in an astonishingly short span of time, seen as the man who effectively runs Pakistan cricket right now. To reflect that elevated status, he resigned from his role as director and head coach at Lahore Qalandars, a position he had held for eight years. On the second day in Pindi, Mohammad Rizwan, ever the astute judge of where the balance of power lies in Pakistan cricket, chirped into the stump mic as one spun sharply into Harry Brook, “This is Aaqib-ball now, we are members of Aaqib-ball.”

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Being in the wilderness comes naturally to Sajid. He says he has tended to the last-in, first-out through his career stretching back to his junior days. If he failed to deliver when Pakistan had ripped up their long-term plan and publicly declawed their coaches to create bespoke conditions for him, there might just be no way back.

He found an area of rough on what was by now a day-seven pitch, and flighted it wider into the degraded dirt. Joe Root didn’t appreciate the changed length and went for the sweep anyway. It is a shot that batters have put away gradually over the past two Tests, and this was the first moment its perils became apparent. Root dragged on, Sajid and Noman ripped through the middle order, and the series turned on a dime.

“Pakistan have performed a weird interpretive dance, insisting it’s a team game in a series that has been all about individuals. Masood and Gillespie, who had their wings clipped. Aaqib, who has become cricket director, selector and coach in all but name. Sajid and Noman, of course, but also Shakeel and Salman”

Before the pair had even finished cleaning England up in the second innings, Aaqib and Dar were speeding along the M-2, making a beeline for Rawalpindi. Until last week, making a spinning track in Pindi was considered impossible; you might as well be planting palm trees in the Arctic Circle.

It’s not quite wedding season in Islamabad yet, so the PCB was able to pick up a few of those giant heaters, positioning them close to the pitch five days out from the toss. Giant industrial fans and windbreakers ringfenced the surface, with garden rakes diligently working around the footmarks. People did assume the pitchforks would be out by this stage of the series, but this probably isn’t what they meant. The following day, Dar and Aaqib were among a sizeable group of people working around the pitch; if there were signs asking people not to step on it, they certainly weren’t visible from the media centre.

Pakistan have performed a weird interpretive dance, insisting it’s a team game in a series that has been all about individuals. The individuals, like Masood and Gillespie, who had their wings clipped, and those, like Aaqib, who has become cricket director, selector and coach in all but name. Sajid and Noman, of course, but also Saud Shakeel and Salman Ali Agha, who can counter these spinning conditions with the patience that comes with familiarity.

Rizwan, perhaps the best keeper in the international game, barely missed a beat in these trying conditions. Jamie Smith’s wicketkeeping credentials were fully put to the test, and missed chances – crucially a drop off Salman’s bat early in his second innings in Multan – began to mount. Individually brilliant players with specific skills in specific conditions, the rest of the team sacrificed to maximise those advantages.

The rest of the batters, as Masood pointed out, faced the same problems as England’s did. England’s top four comfortably outscored Pakistan’s over the last two Tests, 118 more runs between them during this time. But contributions through the middle order were scarce, and there was a consistent inability to shoot Pakistan’s lower order out cheaply; four of Pakistan’s seven largest partnerships this series came for the bottom four. Domestic cricket in Pakistan is a scrap, and this very domestic of Pakistani sides was doing just that.

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This has been a series played in terrific spirits. England have barely peeped about the spinning surfaces, while Sajid’s boisterous send-offs have been treated as harmless pantomime villainy. No one ever quite mentioned it again, but Pakistan hadn’t forgotten what Duckett had said during the second Test with Pakistan in a position of advantage.

He was right, of course. Pakistan had lost each of their last six Tests by falling apart in their second innings, often surrendering a position of relative advantage. In the dying light of the second day in Pindi, though, the tables were turned, and England had to come out in the third innings negotiating a tricky deficit.

Pakistan may have produced an overnight formula to come back in the series, but it was far too late for England’s batters to find one that countered Sajid and Noman. They had bowled all but 12 overs since England’s second innings in the second Multan Test, and the rust had been cast off. Before light intervened, Duckett, Crawley and Ollie Pope had their series brought to a close.

This, indeed, as Rizwan senses, is Aaqib-ball. Meet Pakistan’s newest revolution, but keep that matchbox by you.