As England are set to host Pakistan for the second half of their Test summer, here is a look back at the past decade and a half of this historical rivalry.
“The wake-up call no one wanted”
On a hot day in 2012, in front of the near-empty stands in Abu Dhabi, Pakistan needed a miracle. Since 1902, England had failed to chase 145 (or lower) only once. When Pakistan previously defended low targets against England – 2005 Multan and more famously 1954 Oval – their seamers played key roles. Here, the onus lay on their spinners.
This was no ordinary England side either. They were the top-ranked Test side at that point. They had regained the Ashes in 2009 and retained it in Australia in 2010/11. Later that year, they would outspin India in India to win a Test series there after 28 years. It would take a miracle to deny them in Abu Dhabi now.
Pakistan had known miracles, but their heroes were seldom left-arm spinners. In the 20th century, that genre of bowlers had taken only 307 Test wickets for them, of which Iqbal Qasim alone accounted for 171. Abdur Rehman was, thus, at best expected to play a support act to Saeed Ajmal, the star spinner of the side who had taken 10 wickets when they had won the first Test.
Despite the odds heavily stacked against his side, Rehman became Pakistan’s new hero after 61 balls of left-arm spin, as he took six England wickets for 25 runs. Five of them came without any help from a teammate, asEngland folded for 72. Coach Andy Flower called it “the wake-up call no one wanted”.
England seemed to avenge this by bowling out Pakistan for 99 in the third Test. But boosted by Azhar Ali and Younis Khan’s second-innings hundreds, Ajmal and Rehman spun Pakistan to a 3-0 sweep against the world’s best side.
The Misbah mantra
Misbah-ul-Haq had taken over Pakistan in difficult times. The attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in 2009 had forced Pakistan to host cricket outside home. No more Test cricket on the dry, abrasive surfaces that had inspired the birth and nurturing of reverse swing. Then in 2010, a spot-fixing scandal took away Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, the two men touted to lead their pace attack in that era.
Misbah resolved both problems by resorting to spin. Danish Kaneria was gone and Yasir Shah was still some years away, but he had a world-class off-spinner in Ajmal. With no fast bowler (or home pitches) at his disposal, his side picked spinners as well as batters who bowled spin (Mohammad Hafeez, Shoaib Malik). Pakistan cricket entered a stage of attritional, hard-nosed cricket characterised by dour batting and spin chokes. Not what you expect of the land of pace is pace, yaar.
Misbah led Pakistan 56 times in Test cricket. In these, they conceded 3.08 runs an over (slowest in the world) and scored at 3.05 (quicker than only the West Indies and Zimbabwe). Defensive cricket, yes, but it worked: Misbah won 26 Tests as captain (no one else from Pakistan has even 15 wins).
Naturally, Misbah repeated the 2011/12 blueprint when England returned to the UAE in 2015/16. The years in between had given him enough time to test it on other oppositions. Malik and Alastair Cook hit double tons in the first Test. Then, after England’s first innings stretched into the last day, Pakistan collapsed from 113-3 to 173 against Adil Rashid in a mad phase of cricket. Sensing a win out of nowhere – they needed only 99 – England went for rapid runs but at 74-4, the umpires decided it was too dark to continue.
Then Pakistan successfully implemented their now-familiar spin-choke-in-the-UAE ploy. In 2014, the ICC had deemed Ajmal’s action as illegal, but Pakistan had found Yasir instead. To replace Rehman, they had unearthed another left-arm spinner, Zulfiqar Babar. And Malik added variety by turning the ball into the right-hander.
Four years ago, Ajmal and Rehman had shared 43 wickets out of 60 and Hafeez had got another five. Now, this new trio shared 35 wickets out of 53 as Pakistan clinched the series 2-0.
Pakistan’s London fortress
Of course, spin would not help Pakistan win Tests in England. For the 2016 tour to England, however, they were boosted by two things. One, having served his ban, Amir returned to the fold. And two, they came extremely well prepared. They had trained at a rigorous military camp before arriving early in England to acclimatise to the conditions.
The mission still needed a boost. That came at Lord’s from Misbah, who became the oldest post-War batter to score a Test hundred (in bright orange boots, too) and celebrated with push-ups as a tribute to the training. Yasir then took 10 wickets, but fittingly, Amir took the final wicket to seal a famous win at the venue where a teenage mistake had stripped him of five years of cricket and dignity.
Part of Pakistan’s Lord’s success lay in their stranglehold on Joe Root, whom they deprived of runs and forced into playing a false shot during the chase. Root avenged that at Old Trafford: he got 254, then a 48-ball 71 not out to help England declare, and even got a wicket in the dying stages. England also won at Edgbaston to go 2-1 up, but at The Oval, Younis buried England under a double ton before Yasir ran through with 5-71. An honourable 2-2 to end Pakistan’s first tour since that traumatic visit in 2010 that had led to the start of the Misbah era.
Misbah and Younis had retired by the time Pakistan returned in 2018, but a four-pronged attack helped Sarfaraz Ahmed’s side win by nine wickets at Lord’s. England drew this two-Test series with an innings win at Headingley, keeping in tune with Pakistan’s London tradition.
It was Pakistan’s tenth win in 26 Tests at London, where they have only lost eight, and none since 2010. Across the rest of England, that record reads 3-22 from 32 Tests.
Covid and Bazball
No Test was scheduled for London when Pakistan returned in the summer of 2020, the year when biobubble and social distancing entered cricket’s lexicon. Having returned from England with two drawn series in as many tours, Pakistan squandered a chance of going a step further.
Defending 277 at Old Trafford, they reduced England to 118-5 before Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes guided the hosts to a famous win. Southampton rains marred the rest of the series, though not before Zak Crawley amassed 267 in the final Test.
Crawley was at the helm of things when the two teams met again two and a half years later, for England’s first Tests in Pakistan in 17 years. By then, things had changed in England. With Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum at the helm, England had embarked on a batting approach characterised by high-risk batting, and at times, short-pitched fast bowling. From one win in 17 Tests, Bazball had propelled England to six in seven.
And at Rawalpindi, England’s batting helped them win an unwinnable Test. The wicket was too flat to produce magic, while fading light made six hours of cricket virtually impossible. So England blasted 657 at 6.50 an over (506-4 in 75 overs on day one!) and then 264-7 at 7.36. That bought Ollie Robinson and James Anderson enough time to bowl on and on and on in the fourth innings on a pitch that still held firm. Pakistan eventually yielded in fading light.
England have attacked 64% of the balls they’ve faced today - this is the highest attacking shot percentage in a Test innings since records begun (2006). The previous record was 54%. For context: since 2015 England have attacked 49% of balls faced in ODIs & 65% in T20s. #PAKvENG
— CricViz Analyst (@cricvizanalyst) December 1, 2022
Earlier that year, at Rawalpindi, a full-strength Australian attack had taken only four wickets in 239 overs, which helps put England’s astonishing win into perspective. Bazball had its critics, but its defenders will always have Rawalpindi.
The template almost backfired in Multan when Pakistan came within 27 runs of a win. England, however, had the fast bowlers to get the job done. After Anderson – all of 40 – bowled that ball to clean up Mohammad Rizwan, Mark Wood’s pace and varying lines did the rest. A comfortable win in Karachi helped England complete a clean sweep.
Two years later in Multan, Pakistan scored 556 – a usually safe score – but Root (262) and Harry Brook (317) responded with a 454-run stand in 87 overs. When Pakistan crashed to an innings defeat, England seemed set for another sweep.
Cricket with fans
It was at this point that Pakistan summoned its fans … albeit of a different sort. The Multan defeat had not been a one-off. Earlier that year, a defeat against the USA had resulted in Pakistan’s first-round exit at the T20 World Cup, and then Bangladesh had beaten them at home. Time had come for drastic measures.
Pakistan dropped Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi, and Naseem Shah in one go. Then, as the Multan sun baked the used pitch, the curators installed an industrial fan at either end. They assembled off-spinner Sajid Khan, left-arm spinner (another in Pakistan!) Noman Ali, and leg-spinner Zahid Mehmood. None of them had played a first-class match that year, but it did not matter.
Bazball had come off in the past – but not on rank turners. England had been unable to biff their way to wins in India earlier that year on somewhat traditional spinning wickets. All Shan Masood needed in Multan was to win the toss and bat first, which he did. Noman and Sajid shared all 20 wickets in that match, and shared 19 in the decider. Pakistan “clincially ambushed” England, wrote the Wisden Almanack.
Pakistan won by spin yet again, but they did not do it by taking a leaf out of Misbah’s book. Back then, it was attritional spin bowling on traditional turners. Here, they rolled out extreme pitches. It might have backfired, but Pakistan’s spinners (and batters) were significantly more experienced than their English opponents.
Beyond Bazball
Come the 2026 series, both sides have reinstated their ace batters as captains. In the West Indies, the Pakistan seamers impressed in Tarouba. After the defeat, however, Babar quickly Misbahised the attack by employing the spin choke at Port of Spain to level the series.
For Pakistan, the hope will be that Babar 2.0 can put a stop to a wretched run of results, as well as the constant chop-and-change with selections. For England, it is an opportunity to move on from the Bazball era and find their new identity.
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