It was not a mirage in Multan, but an overdue end to a four-year drought. Shan Masood has talked a good game in his first year as Pakistan captain but after five defeats out of five – in which his career average remained below 30 – he came into this series knowing that, unless he delivered with the bat, his position would be seen as untenable.
This was as compelling a response as Masood could have wished for. When he hit 156 in Manchester in August 2020, he looked to have finally cracked Test cricket: it was his third successive hundred, albeit spread across an eight-month period. But in his 27 innings since then, he had not managed a single score above 60.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Masood’s 151 was that he paid as much attention to ‘how’ as ‘how many’. Once a dour, shotless player who would crawl along at a strike rate of 40, Masood showed his team exactly how he wants them to bat by putting England’s seamers under pressure and targeting the young offspinner Shoaib Bashir.
It would have been very different but for a review. Masood looked rushed by the extra pace during Brydon Carse’s first spell on Test debut, and had just edged him for four to reach 16 when he was given out lbw. But he was right to question Kumar Dharmasena’s on-field decision, with Hawk-Eye confirming the ball had pitched outside leg stump.
The Pakistan captaincy is a role about more than just leading a cricket team. Its incumbents are also expected to act as spokesmen, musing at length about the state of the game – and the country. Masood’s views have been cited so many times that he should be charging royalties, and last week he gave a press conference previewing this series that lasted the best part of an hour.
By his own admission, Masood had his eyes opened when England toured Pakistan two years ago and has taken inspiration from their attacking approach. He played in the third Test of that series after running the drinks in the first two, and describing England on Sunday as “pioneers” whose style “has had an effect on the world”.
It has certainly had an effect on Masood, as he demonstrated with his calculated takedown of Bashir. Masood picked the ball after a convincing lbw shout as his opportunity to attack in Bashir’s second over, charging down to hack him through midwicket before using his feet again to the subsequent delivery, and launching him back over his head.
A couple of skips down the pitch were enough to throw Bashir off his length, and Masood pulled his drag-down for four in the following over, then launched him over extra cover. It posed a problem for Ollie Pope, who could not rely on spin at both ends and found himself chasing the game while Masood and Abdullah Shafique piled on 253 for the second wicket.
Masood explained that he saw Bashir’s introduction as an opportunity after Pakistan had seen off Chris Woakes’ threat with the new ball, on a pitch which offered very little for bowlers after some early movement. “If you can get the spinners away, you change the way they bowl,” he said. “On a first-day wicket, when you’ve had a good start, that’s when you have to cash in.”
He expressly targeted a “mammoth partnership” early in his stand with Shafique. “The way we played, the way we put some scoreboard pressure on them, the way we kept running hard and made sure that we scored at 4.5-5 [per over] – that’s an important thing. If we would have just set up shop and tried to defend our way through the day, I don’t think we would have had 328 on the board.”
Masood survived occasional sketchy moments off Gus Atkinson, including a top-edged pull that went just over the long-leg fielder and a gloved short ball that dropped short of Jamie Smith. But he was otherwise assured on his way to three figures, cruising along at a rapid rate: his hundred, reached off 102 balls, was Pakistan’s fastest in a decade.
