MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistan captain Shan Masood termed their series-levelling victory in the second test against England “special” as the hosts snapped their nearly four-year winless run on home soil in this format.
The 152-run victory in Multan on Friday is Pakistan’s first in a home test since they defeated South Africa in Rawalpindi in February 2021.
It was also Pakistan’s first test win under Shan, who replaced Babar Azam as the test captain late last year.
“I think the first one’s always special, it has come after some hard times, some rough times…” Masood said after Pakistan bounced back from their innings defeat in the series opener at the same venue.
“You can’t doubt the effort of the boys. You can’t doubt their commitment and everyone involved in it.
“It will be special for everyone, because it’s come after some tough times, and it’s kept us hungry.
“We’re just glad that we were able to put the plans in place, get 20 wickets and were able to back it up with some decent first and second inning scores.”
Pakistan took a gamble by dropping an out of form Babar along with frontline pacers Naseem Shah and Shaheen Afridi.
They picked a spin-heavy attack for the second test and the ploy paid off as Sajid Khan and Noman Ali shared between them all 20 England wickets on a surface that offered plenty of turn.
“We haven’t played a lot of test cricket in Multan, the only one we played was two years ago and that offered some spin.
“So we thought, why not try something like that?”
England lost eight wickets in the fourth day’s morning session before being all out for 144 in their second innings.
Opener Ben Duckett smashed a belligerent hundred in the first innings but Ben Stokes’ 37 was the highest individual score for the tourists in the second.
“Ben Duckett’s first innings hundred showed us the way about how we were to chase this total down,” Stokes said afterwards.
“Obviously Pakistan, the guys who got the sweep shots out, made it very difficult to control the run rate and set fields to.
“So when you get extreme conditions like that, you’ve got to find a way to negate that spin, which I think we managed to do in some good parts.
“…we would have liked to have gone on, especially myself and a couple of the guys who got starts, we might even be able to get closer, if not win the game.”
The third and final test begins in Rawalpindi on Thursday.
(Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Shri Navaratnam)
