The Shorter Wisden 2013 (51 page)

Pakistan encountered similar problems, and actually lost more batsmen lbw as the series progressed: three in the First Test, seven in the Second, and 11 in the Third. But while they too
struggled against brisk left-arm spin – like Rehman, Monty Panesar won eight lbw appeals – they got into less of a tangle against Graeme Swann’s orthodox off-breaks: he removed
four batsmen leg-before to Ajmal’s 11. Crucially, in the Third Test, Azhar Ali and Younis Khan had the nous to buck the trend, scoring the only centuries of the series in a partnership of 216
during which they deftly kept their pads out of the way.

Thrashed by ten wickets in the First Test, England had good opportunities to win the next two. Indeed, they believed they should have won the series. After three days of disciplined cricket in
Abu Dhabi, they faltered to 72 all out in pursuit of 145 for victory. Then, in the Third, England reduced Pakistan to 44 for seven on the first morning on their way to 99 all out, before they
fought back to become the first team since 1907 to win a Test after being bowled out for fewer than 100 in the first innings of the game.

Crucial to it all was Ajmal, whose skills did not escape controversy. On the first day of the series – the first day, in fact, on which the teams had played each other since the jailing of
three Pakistan players and their agent following the spot-fixing scandal at Lord’s in 2010 – his action was called into question. Comments made on television by Bob Willis back in the
UK were the catalyst, and there was a flurry of confusion later in the series, when Ajmal appeared to tell the BBC he had been granted permission to bend his arm by 23.5 degrees at the elbow, well
outside the permitted 15. The ICC later said the quote had been a product of linguistic confusion, and released the results of scientific tests which showed the extent of Ajmal’s flexion was
in fact as low as seven degrees.

Although England coach Andy Flower privately harboured suspicions about Ajmal’s action, there was a desire on both sides to quell any animosity lingering from the toxic 2010 series. And,
in Misbah-ul-Haq – who had been left out of those Tests – Pakistan had a captain anxious not to reopen old wounds. He was calm and considered in everything he did, and apparently
managed to unite the Pakistan dressing-room, a task beyond many of his predecessors. Misbah’s only skewed judgment came when he was dismissed lbw five times out of five in the Tests, and
referred the last four. The technology supported the umpire’s verdict on each occasion.

While England’s batsmen struggled, their bowlers were superb. Stuart Broad and James Anderson were miserly with new ball and old, drilling an off-stump line and extracting enough movement
to trouble the Pakistanis. They had next to no support from other seamers. Chris Tremlett flew home for back surgery after the First Test, while Tim Bresnan – forced to return to the UK
because the elbow problem on which he underwent an operation the previous November had not fully healed – missed the whole series, although he was able to come back for the one-day leg.

From the Second Test onwards England fielded two spinners, and Panesar – playing international cricket for the first time since he helped save the Ashes opener at Cardiff with the bat in
July 2009 – ended with 14 wickets. He was usually the first spinner called on by Strauss and, in his two games, bowled 141 overs to Swann’s 85. Swann ascribed this to the lack of
left-handers in Pakistan’s line-up. In truth, Panesar outbowled him.

England enjoyed many aspects of the tour – good hotels, top-notch facilities, no internal flights – but the cricket bug has yet to catch on in the UAE. Crowds were poor, with the
Emiratis apparently uninterested, and Pakistani immigrants only occasionally willing or able to surrender a day’s work to travel to grounds not serviced by public transport.

The Dubai Sports City Stadium was surrounded by half-constructed buildings on which the cranes had not moved for several years. It was like a scene from a post-apocalypse movie set. Abu
Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Stadium was in the middle of the desert, although the building work here, in the wealthiest of the Emirate states, was advancing fast. During the Tests, more than half of
the crowd were normally Barmy Army members and assorted other England fans. Relocating matches to the UAE because of security concerns seemed an acceptable compromise for the Pakistan Cricket
Board, but this was a home series only in the loosest sense.

When the one-day series started, Cook made centuries in the first two games and 80 in the third, while Pietersen reached three figures in the final two. He described his innings of 130, which
ensured England’s whitewash, as his finest in one-day cricket. The decision to promote him back to the opener’s role he performed briefly in the 2011 World Cup – a switch made
because of his poor returns at No. 4 and Flower’s suspicion that he needed to refire Pietersen’s appetite for 50-over cricket – was a huge success, and in stark contrast to his
travails in the Tests. (The story, of course, would later develop a life of its own.)

Just as influential was Steven Finn. He bowled fast and straight to collect 13 wickets in the four matches, including figures of four for 34 in each of the first two. The power of Finn and
England’s other bowlers was too much for a Pakistan side who had not lost any bilateral one-day series in 2011. England were able to rest a number of senior players for the final match and
still win.

Cook advanced his standing as a leader, and his aggressive batting persuaded England to add him to the Twenty20 squad as cover because of minor injuries elsewhere, even if he was never seriously
considered for a place in the starting team. Broad became England’s third captain of the tour in the Twenty20 matches, and the management seemed happy to continue splitting the job –
although the 50-over success under Cook had the unintended consequence of highlighting the Test losses under Strauss. Yet, for the time being at least, Strauss’s position was under no serious
threat.

England, the reigning world Twenty20 champions, secured the series by winning the final two matches after a careless defeat in the first. Younger players, such as Jonny Bairstow and Jade
Dernbach, made useful contributions, although Pietersen and Swann were crucial too. By now, England were more used to the wiles of Pakistan’s spin bowlers, and more at ease with fields that
were less attacking than in the Tests. If the one-day series had come first, everything might have been different. And maybe even a little more logical.

PAKISTAN v ENGLAND

First Test Match

D
EREK
P
RINGLE

At Dubai, January 17–19, 2012. Pakistan won by ten wickets. Toss: England.

A little over two months after three Pakistani players were imprisoned for spot-fixing during their previous Test against England, at Lord’s in August 2010, the sides met at the neutral
venue of the Dubai Sports City Stadium. But the impressive, if sterile, ground did not preside over neutral cricket – at least not from the Pakistanis, who immediately located top gear to
despatch England inside three days.

If the meeting of these teams, with their history of volatility, was always likely to be unpredictable, few could have foreseen the drubbing suffered by England in their first Test since
officially becoming the world’s No. 1 side. To lose by ten wickets was bad enough; to do so after your captain had won the toss, and the pitch offered only moderate assistance to the bowlers,
was difficult to credit.

The England attack, it’s true, performed manfully, but the haplessness of the batsmen, who – for only the third time in a Test since the 2006-07 Ashes – were dismissed twice
for under 200, meant their efforts were wasted. And central to the demise was Saeed Ajmal, whose jerky mix of doosras and off-breaks brought him match figures of ten for 97, the best by a Pakistani
against England for over 24 years.

During the tea interval on the first day – not long before England were dismissed for 192, itself something of a recovery from 43 for five – Bob Willis, summarising for Sky TV in
their London studio, threatened to turn the match into a battle of the bent elbow. It was a prompt the British media took up with glee: no sooner had Ajmal completed career-best figures of seven
for 55 than his action became the story.

Willis was a professional cricketer from 1969 to 1984, an age intolerant of bowlers with noticeable snap at the point of delivery. His doubts over the legitimacy of Ajmal’s action would
have been echoed by many from his era, but the change to the playing conditions in 2005, when the ICC sanctioned flexion of up to 15 degrees, was more significant.

It helped to fan the flames that Ajmal had been reported for a suspect action in 2009 by Billy Bowden, one of the on-field umpires in this Test. Bowden had aired his misgivings during a one-day
international against Australia, though Ajmal was cleared on that occasion by experts in human movement at the University of Western Australia. According to their findings, made in controlled
laboratory conditions by Professor Bruce Elliott, Ajmal’s bowling arm had 23 degrees of flex at the elbow when it was horizontal – but it straightened by only ten degrees when he bowled
his off-break, and by seven with his doosra or quicker ball.

Just in case England had been fussing over their protractors, Ajmal and his captain, Misbah-ul-Haq, also planted the possibility of a new mystery delivery, the teesra – or third one. If it
did exist, other than as a deliberate distraction in the build-up to the match, Ajmal didn’t need to harness it: only Trott and Prior appeared able to pick even the standard variations in his
arsenal.

The Decision Review System seemed to make England’s batsmen doubly jittery. After they were prevented from using their front pads as a reliable line of defence against spin, their
techniques unravelled almost as quickly as their confidence. Pietersen, who before the series referred to the DRS as “that bloody machine”, looked especially confused. Unable to pick
Ajmal, and with a long-standing unease against left-arm spin – purveyed here by the accurate Abdur Rehman – he displayed all the existential angst of Edvard Munch’s
The
Scream
during his 29-ball innings on the opening day. Ajmal finally put him out of his misery, lbw for two.

None except Prior, who made an unbeaten 70, and Swann, who swung lustily for 34, offered much of a solution. Prior used his feet well – not in the traditional sense of dancing down the
pitch, which English batsmen had long avoided, but by stretching well forward or getting right back. When confronted by Ajmal, so many of England’s batsmen simply shuffled their feet and hung
their bats in submission, a strong indication that they hadn’t a clue which way the ball was turning.

Pakistan’s retort was an opening stand of 114 between Mohammad Hafeez and Taufeeq Umar, though that belied the stoic efforts of Broad and Anderson. With England opting for just one
specialist spinner (Tremlett was preferred to Monty Panesar), they had to rotate their three seamers. As Swann’s foils, they ran in bravely and – with a little help from Trott, who
trapped Younis Khan with a vicious nip-backer – they managed to dismiss Pakistan for 338. Their lead was 146, but England knew it could have been worse.

In the event, any vague sense of relief was fleeting. With their second-innings anxieties focused on Ajmal, England appeared to forget that Umar Gul was no slouch either. Charging in from the
Southern End, he dismissed Strauss, Cook and Pietersen in his opening spell – though there was enough doubt over Strauss’s dismissal, caught down the leg side by Adnan Akmal, for him to
review it and, later, for Andy Flower to complain to the match referee.

But Gul’s strikes left England’s shaky middle order to confront Ajmal and Rehman. And while the pitch held true, resistance – apart from Trott’s 49 and another cameo from
Swann – was token as the spinners shared six wickets. Trott’s efforts at least meant Pakistan needed to bat again, but not for long. Soon after, England were wallowing in their first
defeat in ten Tests, since Perth in 2010-11, and their first inside three days since being ambushed by Australia at Headingley in 2009. In those series, England would hold their nerve. Out in the
UAE, things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Man of the Match:
Saeed Ajmal.

Umar Gul 12– 4–35–0; Aizaz Cheema 12–0– 43–1; Mohammad Hafeez 6–3–5–1; Abdur Rehman 18–5–52–1; Saeed
Ajmal 24.3–7–55–7.
Second innings
—Umar Gul 19–5–63– 4; Aizaz Cheema 7.2–1–9–0; Mohammad Hafeez 2–0– 4–0; Saeed
Ajmal 17.3– 4– 42–3; Abdur Rehman 12–2–37–3.