One of the most startling reversals in Test history - Zaltzman

If a three-game contest can be a series of two halves, then Pakistan's 2-1 series win over England was it, producing one of the most startling reversals of fortune in Test history.

England faced 356 overs and three balls in Pakistan. In the first 191.2 overs, they made 1,034 runs for nine wickets - 115 runs per wicket, at 5.40 per over, losing a wicket every 21 overs.

In the last 165.1 overs of the series, they aggregated 603 for 38 - 16 runs per wicket, at 3.65 per over, losing a wicket every 26 balls.

The pitches for the second and third Tests were undoubtedly challenging, but it is worth noting that the first innings combined in those games aggregated, respectively, 657 and 611 runs.

The average for all Tests in Asia since 2010 is around 730; worldwide, the figure is around 690.

In terms of average lateral deviation for spinners, these games were in the top quarter of matches where ball-tracking data is available, but not in the top sixth.

Obviously, the amount of spin off the surface depends on the specific bowlers playing, as well as the surface itself. Nonetheless, the data suggests that these pitches were difficult, but not outlandish.

They were also very different to the prevailing trend of pitches in Pakistan. In the 20 years before this tour, Pakistan had been, statistically, the least rewarding country in which to bowl spin in Test cricket.

Collectively, either side of the 10-year hiatus during which Pakistan had to play their ‘home’ Tests in the United Arab Emirates, all spinners had averaged 45.8 (42.0 since Test cricket restarted here in late 2019).

Australia had had the second worst collective average for spinners - 43.1 since October 2004, 40.3 since October 2019 - and in other Asian countries, the world’s tweaksters averaged in the low 30s.

In the 20 years before that, Pakistan had been much more productive for slow bowlers - they averaged 33.4, in line with other Test-hosting countries in Asia.

This series, therefore, was a striking outlier in recent Test cricket in Pakistan.

It presented England with a completely different challenge to the one they faced two years ago on the same grounds, and scuppered the Bazballistics that had won four consecutive Tests in this country.

Just as those four successful Tests generated some astonishing stats, so too did these two defeats.

England were bowled out in their second innings in under 40 overs for the third time in their last four matches, having been speed-skittled at The Oval against Sri Lanka, and in the second of the Multan Tests.

England had only three under 40-over team innings in the 1980s, and three in the 1990s (their least successful Test decades in terms of results).

They were not bowled out in under 40 overs for 55 years between being bowled out in 37 overs by Australia at Trent Bridge in May 1921 (England’s first home Test innings after the First World War), and in 32.5 overs by the searing West Indies pace attack at Old Trafford in July 1976, in between which England played 387 Tests.

Never before had a pair of bowlers taken 39 wickets in a two-Test sequence, as the series-discombobulating pair of Noman Ali and Sajid Khan achieved this month.

In 1956, England’s Jim Laker and Tony Lock took 38 in the third and fourth Tests against Australia - Laker took 11 and Lock seven at Leeds, followed famously by Laker’s mind-bending 19 at Old Trafford, with Lock hoovering up the other one.

CricViz’s ball-tracking data illustrates how the Pakistan pair skilfully adapted their approach. Noman bowled notably slower than his average speed recording in his previous appearances, and Sajid bowled a little quicker on average than he had in his Test career before this series, and with a significantly higher percentage of quicker balls.

To give further statistical evidence of the rare nature of their success, it is worth looking at bowlers who have taken six or more wickets in an innings in consecutive Tests against England since 1985.

Prior to Sajid and Noman, the last to do so was Mehedi Hasan Miraz, for Bangladesh, when he baffled England in his debut series with 19 wickets in two Tests.

Mehedi has since constructed a fine, if not world-beating, career, but the nine bowlers on the list before him contain some of the greatest in the history of the sport - Rangana Herath, the infinitely cunning Sri Lankan left-arm spinner who took more than 400 Test wickets; then the four leading non-English wicket-takers in Test history: Muttiah Muralitharan, Anil Kumble, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne.

Before them, three of the best pace bowlers ever seen - Malcolm Marshall, Imran Khan and Richard Hadlee - plus Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir, the best leg-spinner of the 30 years before Warne and Kumble.

These icons of cricket have now been joined by Sajid, an off-spinner who had had one good Test match out of his eight previous appearances and had played once for Pakistan in the previous two-and-a-half years.

And Noman, a left-armer who, before running through Sri Lanka in his most recent Test in 2023, had managed only 21 wickets at 53.6 in the nine Tests he had played since November 2021.

Their brilliance added to what has been a strange and fascinating few months for Test cricket.

England lost to Pakistan, who had lost to Bangladesh, who then lost to India, who have just lost to New Zealand, who had lost to Sri Lanka, who had lost to England.

October 2024 has also been The Month Of The Unexpected Seven-For.

As well as the apparently discarded Sajid and Noman, India’s Washington Sundar, after three-and-a-half years out of Test cricket, returned with seven and four wickets in the second Test against New Zealand, having taken only 47 wickets, with one five-wicket haul, in his previous 25 red-ball matches, spread over seven years.

For New Zealand, Mitchell Santner, who had not even managed to take four in any innings in his first 28 Tests over almost nine years, took seven and six to spin the Kiwis to one of their greatest series wins.

It has been the first calendar month in Test history to feature four different bowlers taking seven or more wickets in an innings, all by bowlers who, on 1 October, might well have not expected even to play a Test match.