All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

275 an obvious decline in domestic cricket standards. Multan and Islamabad were reasonably evenly matched; of the 22 players in the match only Babar would play Test cricket, although Islamabad’s 21-year-old Swansea-born allrounder Imad Wasim would go on to play in ODIs and be a member of the Pakistan side that won the Champions Trophy at The Oval in 2017. The Quaid-e-Azam Trophy was organised this year into two groups of ten teams each playing the other once. When the two teams met at Multan in December each had two matches left. They would finish respectively fourth and fifth in their group, leaving leaders Karachi Blues to play, and beat, Habib Bank in the Final. The Multan Cricket Stadium in the province of Punjab is amulti-use stadium hosting football as well as cricket. Seating around 30,000 spectators, the ground was a replacement for the earlier Qasim Bagh Stadium. Pakistan’s Test match against Bangladesh in August 2001 was the maiden first-class match on the ground. Put in to bat, Multan were 0 for two after the first over and Rameez Alam, who had made 222 not out in his previous innings, was back in the pavilion. Both wickets had fallen to the left-arm fast-medium of Nasrullah Khan who was in his debut season. Multan’s eventual recovery was mainly due to opener and wicketkeeper Gulraiz Sadaf and to captain Naved Yasin who each batted for three hours, making 85 and 131 respectively. Twenty- two-year-old Yasin was one of only two batsmen to make 1,000 runs in the Trophy season. Islamabad’s innings began on the second day, 10 December, Babar’s 31st birthday. Taking five wickets, he had quite a happy birthday. He had entered the attack first change and with a lively action following a diagonal seven pace run-up between umpire and stumps he would eventually bowl 39.4 overs. Islamabad batted steadily to reach 155 for one, at which point Babar took three quick wickets, including Ameer Khan caught behind first ball, and with another wicket falling just before the close the visitors finished the day 229 for five. Multan would have had hopes of a first-innings lead. However, left-hander Ashar Zaidi, fresh from scoring a double-century and a duck in his previous match, was still there, having just reached his fifty. Next day, with considerable help from the lower order, Zaidi guided his side to a useful first-innings lead, remaining unbeaten having batted for just over four hours. When Babar took his eighth wicket, Islamabad captain Rauf Akbar, he had improved on his previous best figures (seven for 97 taken against Sialkot just six weeks before). The next batsman, Fakhar Hussain, kept Babar waiting by hitting a run-a-minute 25, but when he went Nasrullah Khan ended the wait by giving Rameez Alam his second catch in two balls. Babar’s all-ten was the most expensive ever in a competitive first-class match, and the second most expensive ever after Eddie Hemmings’ ten for 175. He hit the stumps just once, the other nine wickets all falling to catches. Among bowlers taking all-ten, only Burton and Bannister had previously had so much help from their fielders. It had been hard work: of the 21 bowlers to take an all-ten outside England and Wales only Zulfiqar Babar