ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2017

Pakistan in 2016/17 How are the mighty fallen. Twelve months ago, Pakistan ruled the roost at the top of the Test rankings; but on these pages we asked then, “For how long”? The answer proved to be “about six weeks”, for having reached top place at the very end of August 2016, they slipped back to second in mid-October when India overtook them after winning their series against New Zealand. Victory over the West Indies in a series in the UAE in November kept Pakistan in second place, but defeats in their next two series began a slide that took them to sixth place by the end of the 2017 season. Over the course of a single year they had lost 18 ranking points, as well as five places in the table. Yet it started out well enough, with that 2-1 series win over the West Indies, which began with a triple-century from opener Azhar Ali and with leg-spinner Yasir Shah taking his 100th Test wicket in his 17th Test, just one off the record of 16 set back in 1896 by George Lohmann. But frailties emerged quickly too. Pakistan could have enforced the follow-on in both the first two Tests but didn’t, and their third-innings collapse in the first Test led to a victory by only 56 runs after they had established a first-innings lead of 222; while in the second Test although the victory was more comfortable on paper (by 133 runs, after a first-innings lead of 228), West Indies were still allowed to make a fourth-innings score of over 300. With the series decided, Pakistan lost two wickets in the first over of the third Test, and eventually fell to an unexpected five-wicket defeat. Away from their adopted home, Pakistan struggled badly in New Zealand and Australia, where in particular Yasir Shah was no longer a potent force (his eight wickets in the five Tests came at an average of over 90 runs apiece, and at an economy rate of over 4½ runs per over). They lost all five of the Test matches (0-2 in New Zealand, 0-3 in Australia), and generally by big margins. An exception was the first Test against Australia at Brisbane where, set 490 to win in the fourth innings, steady batting through the order took then to 450 all out, equalling the third-highest fourth innings total in all Test cricket. The following Test, at Melbourne, began with another double-century from Azhar, but Pakistan still lost – and by an innings, the only scant consolation being that Azhar’s 205* was the highest innings ever played in a Test match by a batsman whose side went on to an innings defeat. Pakistan had thus lost a record (for them) of six Test matches in a row, but they brought that sequence to an end when they visited the Caribbean in April/May 2017 and won the first match of the return series against an underpowered West Indies. They promptly lost by 106 runs to exactly the same West Indies side in the second Test, and only won the third and decisive game of the series when, with a draw all but secured, the West Indian number 11 had a rush of blood off the last ball of what would have been the penultimate over of the match. Yasir at least had a welcome return to form, with 25 wickets at just under 22 apiece in the three Test matches. The 2-1 win was Pakistan’s first-ever series win in eight visits to the Caribbean, but it was more the end of an era than the start of a new one. For that third game was the final Test appearance of two veterans with over 15,000 Test runs and 82 years of age between them. Misbah-ul-Haq had been an unexpected choice when he took over the captaincy after the spot-fixing scandal broke in 2010, but he led by a fine example on and off the field, and was able to bring together a side that had previously not always looked united – and to take them, if briefly, to the very top of the Test world. His steady hand on the tiller, as well as his frequent invaluable contributions with the bat, will be greatly missed. As will the stylish contributions of the second retiree, Younis Khan, who left the scene with 10,099 Test runs to his name, at an average of over 52. He made a century on his Test debut in the 1999/00 season, and his 34th and last – a score of 175 not out – at Sydney in January. His figures of runs and of centuries are Pakistan records, as is his final tally of catches in the field (139, mostly at slip); only Javed Miandad (124) and Inzaman-ul-Haq (119) have exceeded his total of 118 Tests for Pakistan. 277