All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

249 Imran Adil Wasim Haider and offspinner Tanvir Afzal, whose fifty would be the only one he would make in a 66-match career, saw a recovery to 226 all out about an hour and a half before the close. Adil’s final wicket, caught behind, was slow left-armer Naved Nazir who had taken nine for 109 against Lahore City on the same ground the previous year, the first time this feat had been performed at the stadium since first-class cricket had begun there in 1966. His record hadn’t lasted long. Perhaps surprisingly in a lowish score Adil used seven bowlers. His fellow opening bowler was Shahid Anwar who as opening batsman had a busy match. An occasional medium pacer he only once took more than three wickets in an innings, in November 1996 achieving the remarkable figures of six for 2 for National Bank of Pakistan against Pakistan Customs in a match in which he also scored a century. Anwar had bowled fairly steadily conceding less than three runs an over. The other five bowlers used had the unimpressive combined figures of 21-0-97-0. Thirty-year-old umpire Saqib Irfan only stood in eight first-class matches, and this was his first and he had seen an all-ten on the first day. Quite a debut. Bahawalpur’s batsmen soon did their best to undermine Adil’s efforts and the side was facing a large deficit before Saleem Taj (52 not out), at 29 the oldest participant in the match, and Mohammad Zahid (35) came together at 92 for eight and put on 60 for the ninth wicket to give the final score some respectability. Each first innings in the match was limited to 85 overs. Each side had finished about 30 overs short! Adil took another five wickets in Faisalabad’s second innings to finish with 15 for 158 in the match. The star of the innings was 21-year-old Imran Zia who became the second Pakistani wicketkeeper, after Wasim Bari, to take seven catches in an innings, and the first to take ten in a match. Imran Zia had a short, 26-match, career and played his last match just two seasons later. With Faisalabad’s Bilal Ahmed picking up eight catches it was a good match for keepers. Set 211 to win Bahawalpur never looked like getting close. Of their batsmen only opener Shahid Anwar (53) contributed and it was again left to Mohammad Zahid (33) to provide support from the tail. In a match largely dominated by the quicker bowlers he hadn’t needed to do much bowling, but he was no doubt pleased to beat his own previous highest score of 26 twice in the match. It was a curious season for Imran Adil. He didn’t always bowl a great deal, and took 15 wickets in one match and seven in the other six. However he eventually had quite a long career, finishing his last match in 2002/03 with 186 first-class wickets at 27.52. It would be four years after his all- ten before he took five or more wickets in an innings again, but then he achieved the feat five times over two good seasons in which he took 64 wickets. Appropriately his last first-class victim was Wasim Haider, the one batsman who had eluded him 13 years before when he achieved his all-ten.