3 minute read
Pakistan play three Tests in England later this summer. You can never be entirely sure what you’re going to get from Pakistan, but it does feel like the range of unpredictability has been narrowing for a good few years now; the moments of unexpected brilliance growing ever fewer and further between. Looking ahead to that series, not only do we not know quite what we’re hoping for any more, we don’t even really know who we’re hoping to get it from.
At a certain point in middle age, your brain pretty much gives up on associating specific names with family members and pets and instead deposits them all into one big bag. From them on, whenever you need to attract someone’s attention – most likely to stop them doing something – you simply dip into the bag of names and pull one out out.
Sometimes it’s the right name. Sometimes it isn’t. Precision is for the young. As long as you’ve shouted a familiar name, what more can you honestly do?
We’re not saying Pakistan have adopted the same policy when selecting their Test team of late, but it’s… similar. Cast your eye down a given scorecard and while the names are familiar, there isn’t much continuity.
What is the Pakistan Test team these days? We have no idea. Mohammad Rizwan and Shan Masood, we suppose. Salman Agha seems to be there as often as not. Babar Azam when he isn’t injured. But who are the bowlers?
Pakistan have played 13 Tests in the last two years and their most capped bowlers in that time are Noman Ali and Sajid Khan, the ageing emergency rescue team they whistled up after Harry Brook hit that triple hundred. They’ve played seven Tests each.
After them, it’s Khurram Shahzad with six appearances and then Shaheen Afridi with five. Afridi is probably the closest thing Pakistan have to a first-choice bowler and he’s played barely a third of their recent Tests. And it’s not like he’s even been any good when he has played – he’s taken 13 wickets at 40.46.
This week Pakistan had the honour of becoming the first team to be whitewashed in successive series of two or more matches by Bangladesh. No one prefixes their name with “perennial whipping boys” any more, but Bangladesh still aren’t what you would call a Test cricket powerhouse.
And it’s not just Bangladesh. Pakistan have now lost seven away Tests in a row. They haven’t won overseas since beating Sri Lanka in July 2023.
Who is going to get them out of it? Osman Samiuddin describes it as, “exactly the kind of mishmash XI, of stalled, interrupted and stagnated careers, you’d expect after years and years of very poor player management.” He also believes the national team is, “demonstrably the worst place to be for [young players] to maximise their potential.”
For this summer at least, they have Mohammad Abbas, but preparing for each tour by sending a key player away to build a decade of overseas domestic experience isn’t really a sustainable plan.
