Pakistan need to strategise beyond first session to win 2nd Test
When Pakistan’s assistant coach, Azhar Mahmood, was brought to the media centre for the post-match duties, he admitted that the pitch did not behave as his camp expected.
He was not speaking to the media amid a match being played in another country, rather he was perched on the head table in his own country and in his hometown of Rawalpindi, where he has played cricket all his life.
The next day, Pakistan’s premier fast bowler, Naseem Shah, made no secret of his disillusionment with the pitch. He was promised a spicy surface.
Before the start of this match, which was the first Test in a string of seven Tests across the next four months, Pakistan made great efforts to establish a narrative that they wanted to play an exciting brand of cricket and they planned to achieve that by empowering their fast bowlers with conditions in which they could wreak havoc.
Unlike the last two seasons when he could see a shaved, bright yellow surface getting prepared during Pakistan’s pre-match training session, the fast bowler was welcomed with a lush green surface whenever he arrived at the Pindi Cricket Stadium ahead of the first Test of the season against Bangladesh.
Such was the reliance on the method that they sent their only specialist spinner in the squad to play a firstclass for Pakistan Shaheens against their Bangladeshi counterparts and announced, two days out from the match, that they would field a four-man pace attack.
Naseem and his fellow fast bowlers, despite all the team management’s efforts to tailor the surfaces according to their wishes, ended up bowling 705 balls in the first innings across the second, third, and fourth day of the match.
Pakistan’s fast bowlers never had to bowl this many delivers in home Tests (including those played in the United Arab Emirates) in the last 22 years.
That the Rawalpindi surface was going to assist the fast bowlers all five days was always contentious.
August is not a suitable month for long-form cricket and that is why Pakistan’s domestic season usually begins in September.
They have hosted Tests in this month only twice before — in 2001 and 2003 — also against Bangladesh.
That heat and humidity were going to have their say in how the pitch was going to behave and when the pitch started to flatten out by the second day’s play, it was evident that Pakistan had gotten their entire game plan wrong.