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PAK vs ENG 3rd Test Day 3 – Sajid and Noman enjoy the moment Pakistan's plans take shape

Posted on by Kennedy
PAK vs ENG 3rd Test Day 3 – Sajid and Noman enjoy the moment Pakistan's plans take shape

Two weeks before they faced off in the 2017 Australian Open final, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were ailing, injured athletes perhaps fading into the twilight. When they met against all odds in the final, the victorious Federer famously said: “Tennis is a cruel sport, there are no draws, but if there had been one I would have been very happy to take it.” Tonight and share it Rafa.
Sajid Khan and Noman Ali were also out of sight until two weeks ago as they had not played first-class cricket and had no realistic ambitions of returning to the Pakistan side any time soon. As they did so and ended up sharing 39 of England's 40 wickets taken in the last two Tests, Sajid, who was awarded the Player of the Series trophy, expressed broadly the same opinion.

“Nomi Bhai is one of the most experienced players in the Pakistan national team,” Sajid said at the presentation. “We should share these Player of the Series awards. “He's a great spinner who has also mentored me and helped me and so he deserves just as much credit.”

This will be a series to remember for England, but this duo will be remembered in Pakistan. That they would run through England's batters seems inevitable in retrospect; But when England reached 211 for 2 in the first innings in Multan – on a pitch that Sajid said offered something “even if the spinner did nothing” – the reputations of Sajid and Noman were at stake.

And although Sajid insists that the game situation didn't worry him, the expectation that weighed on him was a different matter entirely. “There wasn't that much pressure (in the series), but (there was) some pressure from the comeback. The captain, the vice-captain, the whole team fit together well. We play domestic cricket together, on wickets like that. “So there wasn’t as much pressure.”

38-year-old Noman has the experience of not taking any opportunity for granted. “I feel like it has been a while since we performed well in Pakistan,” he said as he sat next to Sajid at the post-series press conference. “We are grateful that we had the conditions to win the series in this way. The way we have come back is particularly pleasing and we hope to find similar conditions in the future and pose difficulties for other teams.”

But Noman also recognized the extent to which Pakistan could get away with one here. The plan to turn sharply to turn was, much like the surfaces they decided on, half-baked. Their top spinner Abrar Ahmed was out of the series and the three spinners brought in by Pakistan had not played first-class cricket since January. Should England be beaten, it would be through the muscle memory and experience of Sajid and Noman.

If Pakistan wants to adopt this strategy in the future – a prospect which Noman unsurprisingly supported – he believed it would have to implement it properly. “I think if you want to prepare spinners you have to play more red-ball cricket,” he said. “In first-class cricket you get all kinds of conditions with new and old ball. If you do that, you have a lot of experience.”

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