Pakistan’s Sajid Khan triggers England collapse after Ben Duckett ton

2nd Test, Day 2: Pakistan 366 (Kamran Ghulam 118, Saim Ayub 77, Mohammad Rizwan 41; J Leach 4-114, B Carse 3-50, M Potts 2-66) lead England 239-6 (B Duckett 114; Sajid Khan 4-86, Noman Ali 2-75) by 127 runs
Sajid Khan is a player who demands attention, a character whose moustache, however eye-catching, is not half as flamboyant as his celebrations. As England’s innings imploded across a dramatic afternoon in Multan, and an old, tired pitch that had held firm across nearly seven days of Test cricket finally started to surrender, there were quite a few of those.
He is a man who could hardly be more theatrical if he donned a scarlet bowler and started twirling a cane, and here he found a stage to be centre of. The tourists looked on course to comfortably match Pakistan’s first-innings total of 366 until, as the day drew towards a close and with a ball showing the first signs of old age, the spinners found some turn and the course of the game took a twist.
After 41 overs England stood at 210 for two; four overs later it was 225 for six, their centurion from this game had joined the two who went big in the last in the dressingroom, and their ambitions had dipped as rapidly and colourfully as the sun. Across the first two games of this series England had scored 1,034 runs for nine wickets in 191 overs; suddenly they had lost four for 14 in three.
Joe Root was the first of those to fall and the most unfortunate, bottom-edging a delivery from Sajid into a leg, and then a foot, and then the stumps. Ben Duckett, having scored 114 off 129, tried to drive the same bowler and edged to Salman Agha at slip, and five balls later Sajid got one to turn sharply past Harry Brook’s bat and into middle and leg. Two balls after that Ben Stokes edged Noman Ali into a pad and the ball looped wide of short leg, where Abdullah Shafique dived to take a smart catch. Jamie Smith and Brydon Carse survived the last eight overs under intense pressure.
None of that looked likely as Duckett raised his bat a little earlier, even if it was a demonstration of the bowlers’ rising control that it took him 22 balls, and the best part of nine nervy overs, to navigate through the 90s. Still his century was the eighth fastest ever scored by an England opener, remarkably – particularly as he has only scored four centuries – his fourth appearance on that list.
Duckett started England’s innings, surprisingly, with a leave, and then continued it, less surprisingly, with a succession of orthodox and reverse sweeps. These of course are his speciality, and this was their moment. He has now scored three times as many centuries in Asia as he has in England, as well as one more 50, and at times he seemed almost to be taunting the fielders with slight changes of angle, condemning them to hopeless sprints around the boundary.
With Duckett in control, England set off at a sprint, scoring 69 across their first 10 overs, all but one of which featured at least a single boundary. Zak Crawley’s time in the middle was shorter and more dramatic than his opening partner’s, and he required a thick edge of luck to reach 27.
He was on 20 and at the non-striker’s end when he launched himself down the wicket for what he alone thought was a likely single off Sajid, and after turning back was nowhere near his crease when the ball was returned to the bowler. Sajid, however, allowed his left arm to brush the stumps and dislodge the bails as he prepared to gather it, surrendering a certain run-out, and giving him a chance to show that he can emote desolation almost as well as joy.
Precisely two overs later Sajid got one to turn into Crawley’s pad as the batter swung into a reverse sweep, the umpire’s raised finger starting his trudge towards the dressingroom. Duckett had other ideas, and called him back for a review that in the end delayed his departure only briefly: he scored three more runs before another review discovered an edge and ended his innings.
England’s pace of scoring slowed after Crawley’s departure, and when Noman Ali bowled a maiden to Root in the first hour of the final session it was Pakistan’s first in 171 attempts across the two games. By then Ollie Pope had been and gone, the 26-year-old looking comfortable until he suddenly wasn’t, and Sajid spun one past the bat and into the stumps.
It was an unusual day in Multan, rarely sunny and filtered for much of the time through a thick, creamy haze of smog that never quite lifted even as the state of the game gradually became clearer.
Pakistan added 107 to their overnight score for the loss of the last five wickets, two of them falling to the excellent Carse. The debutant took two for just 15 runs in his first 13 overs of the innings, and he ended as England’s most economical bowler even though Aamir Jamal and Salman besmirched his figures by taking 16 off his 16th.
He took revenge by extracting the former’s middle stump with the first ball after lunch to leave Pakistan nine down, and the final wicket fell six overs later, Noman pulling a Jack Leach delivery to deep midwicket where Carse, appropriately, was underneath it. – Guardian