They have always had a penchant for appropriate nicknames here. Bobby Abel for example, a man who CB Fry once said “gathered runs like blackberries” in the late Victorian era and was the first to carry his bat in a Test match. Abel was ‘The Guv’nor’. Then there was Jack Hobbs, commemorated in the eponymous gates that guard this ground: 61,760 runs in first-class cricket, 199 centuries and a technician of genius on uncovered rain-affected pitches. He was ‘The Master’. Later, much later, there was Alec Stewart, ‘The Gaffer’, although to be truthful, that was a monicker bestowed by the inhabitants of the press box.
On the second day of this final Test the flags of Pakistan, England and the United Kingdom fluttered gently at half-mast atop the pavilion, set against an azure summer sky in memory of another who would be recognised alone by the name given him to mark his deeds. Hanif Mohammad, who died on Monday, was ‘The Little Master’, the original, a batsman of prodigious temperament and unwavering concentration, the player of a 16-hour rearguard in Barbados that left his eyelids burnt from the reflected glare of the sun, and scorer of 499 for Karachi. Of all the Pakistan greats he would have recognised a day for batting, occupying the crease, making the bowlers pay.
Hanif would have been proud of Asad Shafiq, another diminutive batsman, although one with a relish for some extravagant strokeplay that ‘The Little Master’, who did not much care for hitting the ball in the air, might have regarded as frivolous at times, bordering on reckless. Or maybe he would have chuckled at the freedom of spirit.
In the third Test, at Edgbaston, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes had his measure, so that he came away with a duck in each innings. The response from his captain, Misbah-ul-Haq, was to push him up the order from six, notionally to three (although the nightwatchman meant he dropped down one from that), and he returned the faith by scoring 109, the ninth hundred of his Test career, before pulling a bouncer from Steve Finn to midwicket where Broad dived, stretched and took a fine catch that a shorter fellow might have fingertipped only.
“Why?” Hanif would have said, shaking his head slowly. “There were runs galore to be had. What a waste.”
Shafiq tends not to go big with his innings, no further than 138 so far. Maybe the moments get to him, the adrenaline pumping a little too strongly.
Perhaps he feels unassailable rather than just in command. With Younis Khan, though, Shafiq had set the foundations that might give Pakistan a significant advantage in their quest to level the series at the last gasp.
While Shafiq was making his way back to the dressing room, and absorbing the generous applause, Younis was sipping a drink. With Shafiq he had added 150 runs for the fourth wicket, taking them to touching distance of England’s first innings and perhaps reflecting on a series that had yet to produce a major innings for him.
Shafiq is a fine, combative player, with a taste for the square-cut and unafraid to attack the spinner. Younis is a Pakistan great, one in the twilight of his career, but, despite more than 9,000 Test runs, with things left to prove. He feels he owed the team and, in pristine conditions, he delivered an unbeaten 101, the 32nd Test hundred of his career.
Younis and Shafiq, together with Azhar Ali had batted Pakistan to a position of strength until the intervention of Woakes and the second new ball. Misbah, a potential stumbling block, was taken in the gully by Alex Hales and the debutant Iftikhar Ahmed, having hit his second ball nicely down the ground, flapped at his third and was well caught by Moeen Ali running back at mid-on.
Thus, 277 for three at one time had become 320 for six and ever mindful of the manner in which England had overturned a 103-run deficit to win at Edgbaston a chance squandered through carelessness. Hanif would not have liked that either. At 340 for six, a lead of 12, the game is as tight as a drumskin.
The England bowlers had found a pitch with better pace and carry than they had been accorded in the other matches, but with this, if it is not supported by some consistent lateral movement, comes opportunity for batsmen. The bowlers thundered in and there was good pace from Finn and Broad but, seduced by the carry, perhaps, as a collective, bowled a little short.
Neither were they helped by the catching, which has let the sides down in this series, but, strangely, England more than their opponents. Categorising all catches as chances is a little unfair, but England missed three on the second day, all of them in the morning session when they were trying to seize the game.
The nightwatchman, Yasir Shah, had made 20 when he edged Woakes’s first ball of the day at a comfortable height to Hales in the gully, who grounded it and beat his hands on the turf in frustration: the irony of it after the events of the first day. Then, when Shafiq, on seven, had barely started, he edged Woakes to the right of third slip where Anderson did well to get a touch.
Finally, when Azhar had 35, he drove a return catch to Finn, who could not hang on in his sprawling follow-through. He is currently spending so much time on the deck that he might consider one of those airbag vests the Olympic equestrian competitors wear.
