Pakistan’s Test captain Shan Masood has called on Pakistan to play more Test cricket, as he readies his side for a rare season of Test cricket bounty.
Pakistan start a jam-packed home season with a two-Test series against Bangladesh, beginning in Rawalpindi on August 21. They host five more Tests at home, against England and then West Indies, and in between play a two-Test series in South Africa. As an indication of how rare this is, the last time Pakistan played more Tests in a season was over 25 years ago, in the 1998-99 season when they played ten.
More than the number of Tests, the long gaps between them have hindered any chance of progress. The Tests against Bangladesh will be Pakistan’s first since the New Year’s Test in Sydney this year. Once they finish the series against West Indies in January 2025, they are not scheduled to play any Tests until October when South Africa visit (and then none until a series against Bangladesh in March 2026).
Masood argued that the stop-start, intermittent nature of this scheduling has caused a gap to develop between the big three of India, Australia and England and other Full Members. He is not alone in this, with Kraigg Brathwaite having made a similar appeal after West Indies’ 3-0 series loss against England last month.
“We need more Test cricket,” Masood said on the PCB podcast, in which he was interviewed alongside Test coach Jason Gillespie, by former cricketer and broadcaster Bazid Khan. “We play a lot of domestic cricket, so I don’t think we can blame that. We do play ten first-class matches minimum, and with the introduction of departmental cricket, some players ended up playing 16-17 first-class matches in a year.
“For me, it’s more about how we can get our team to play more Test matches. That comes down to scheduling, reducing the gaps, and ensuring we have consistent Test squads going forward. We’re playing nine Test matches in four months, but we’ve also had to deal with an unfortunate calendar where we played in Australia, and then we’re playing our next Test after ten months. These are challenges that Pakistan cricket needs to address going forward.”
“If I’m being brutally honest, in home Test matches, because they’ve been played at different times of the year and against different nations, we still haven’t found our ideal way of playing at home that suits our batting, bowling, and overall style.”
Masood replaced Babar Azam as Test captain last year, his first assignment a daunting trip to Australia where Pakistan haven’t avoided defeat – let alone win a Test – since 1995-96. They were duly whitewashed but having pushed Australia in a couple of the games.
The first step, Masood believes, however, is to become more formidable at home. For a couple of seasons after Test cricket returned to Pakistan, they built up a winning home record. But since beating South Africa in January 2021, Pakistan have not won in three home series since, and not even won a Test. They were whitewashed by England before somehow escaping with a 0-0 draw with New Zealand.
Those series – as well as an earlier one with Australia – were played on lifeless surfaces, in stark contrast to the livelier ones when Tests first returned. With a new curator – Tony Hemming – in place, that will be under scrutiny again this season.
“In Test cricket, which is the ultimate challenge in the game, you have to be familiar with certain conditions,” Masood said. “Yes, we’ve been playing at home since 2019, but other teams have been playing on their home soils for much longer. We still have to decide what our best approach at home is.
“If I’m being brutally honest, in home Test matches, because they’ve been played at different times of the year and against different nations, we still haven’t found our ideal way of playing at home that suits our batting, bowling, and overall style. That’s something we need to quickly figure out.
