Razors, crocodiles and opium
Pakistan out-played England from start to finish in the third Test. Their excellence has been thoroughly overlooked
Mohammad Amir and Umar Akmal walk off the pitch after Pakistan’s victory in the third Test. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images
OVERLOOKING THE OBVIOUS
Occam’s razor would be as blunt as a pair of plastic scissors by the time we were done cutting through the morass of theories about what is wrong with England’s batsmen. Technique or temperament? Is Alastair Cook’s front leg too straight? Does Kevin Pietersen play too loose too soon? Is the captaincy getting to Andrew Strauss? Does Stuart Broad need more batting practice?
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem” was how Occam put it, but in the age of Sky Sports News that seems just a touch too fancy-dan, so in keeping with the original principle we’ll just say that the simplest explanation is the best. The razor cuts through a lot things, but mustard is not among them. At least not so long as there are editors, producers and pundits who need to fill the airwaves, print pages and computer screens with opinion and analysis.
If you want a reason why England have mustered more than 300 runs in an innings only once in so far in this series, try this one – Pakistan have the best bowling attack in Test cricket. In fact if Pakistan’s fielders had caught the ball as well at Trent Bridge and Edgbaston as they did at the Oval, then England would not have passed 300 at all, and could very easily be losing the series.
Perhaps the England team and their fans grew fat on the home and away series against Bangladesh and became obsessed with watching their own waistlines. They forgot that not every error in cricket is self-induced, nor every defeat due only to the loser’s ineptitude. Pakistan out-played England from start to finish in the third Test. Their excellence has been overlooked. Given the circumstances, it must rank as one of the most remarkable team performances of the year. Forget about the Ashes. The wider context of this tour is the awful fact that while Pakistan have been in this country one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history has been developing in their homeland, “the slow-motion tsunami” as Ban Ki-moon described it, leaving 14 million people in urgently in need of aid. Just as in 2004, when West Indies were galvanised by the hurricanes which killed almost 2,000 across the Caribbean, Pakistan seem to have been pushed on to greater deeds by the plight of the population they represent.
The team have now won two of their last four Tests, both away from home and against excellent opposition. That is as many victories as they managed in their last 20 Tests, between the start of 2007 and their three-wicket win over Australia at Headingley. In that time they had five different Test captains and five different head coaches. It was only five weeks ago, remember, that Shahid Afridi walked out on the team. After being routed by England by 354 runs and then nine wickets in the first two Tests of this series, how easy it would have been for the team to turn in on itself as it did in Australia last winter. How easy to self-destruct, to collapse into a sorry rabble and lose and lose again before flying home.
Instead, despite playing only 30 overs of first-class cricket between the second and third Tests, the Pakistanis regrouped and came back stronger. Kamran Akmal held his catches, eight of them in the match. His brother Umar bit his lip and resisted the temptation to play a stupid shot as the pressure grew in that tense final innings (belying Matt Prior’s earlier sledge to Azhar Ali “come on lads, let’s get the Akmals in!”). Despite him not having played first-class cricket in six months, Mohammad Yousuf made his mark not just as a batsman, but as a mentor, guiding Azhar through a 20-over partnership. And Azhar himself made 92, an innings that proved he had the mettle for Test cricket. With the openers each hitting a tempo-setting 30-something, every single player from one to 11 made a contribution. It was a consummate team performance.
Overnight then, the batting became adequate and the catching almost exemplary. The bowling, of course, has simply been brilliant all series long. The only Test attack that can match them is South Africa’s, and they have no spinners to equal the devilish Saeed Ajmal. And effective as the brute force and slingy swing of Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn may be, I’d sooner watch the art and craft of the two Mohammads, Amir and Asif.
Amir, only 18, seems almost nerveless. He makes Eoin Morgan look a flibbertigibbet. With the ball he has made Strauss his bunny, dismissing him four times in the series so far (Strauss’s other dismissal was to Wahab Riaz, and he was caught behind on all five occasions – the man needs some practice against left-armers), and has just become the youngest man ever to take five wickets in a Test innings in England. For a real sign of his relish for the battle though, look at his batting stats. He has faced 314 balls in this series, second only to Azhar among his team-mates, and he was there at the finish last Saturday, nervelessly grinding out the 16 runs they need to complete the win.
And then there is Asif. This time last year he was fined one million rupees as punishment for being caught in possession of opium in Dubai, though he insisted the drugs were medicine given to him by a doctor. Still, opium seems a suitably recherché intoxicant for Asif to be accused of using. His languid approach and languorous bowling hypnotises the batsmen into submission, each ball curling and drifting through the air like wafts of thin blue smoke from a pipe. In the Confessions of an Opium Eater, Thomas De Quincey tells how he was chased through his nightmares by a cursed crocodile. “I was compelled to live with him for centuries … the abominable head of the crocodile and his leering eyes looked out at me, multiplied into 10,000 repetitions.” I like to imagine batsmen will come to have similar nightmares of Asif, the snapping of the crocodile’s jaws replaced by the dull thud-thud-thud of the ball snaking past the inside edge and hitting the pad in front of middle stump.
Win the last Test and they will be the first team in Test cricket to come back from 2-0 down to win or draw a four- or five-match series since South Africa did it against England in 1956-57 (thanks to Rob Smyth for the stat). Now there is an achievement to put the Ashes in perspective, for a few weeks at least.