Pakistan cricket team once put England in trouble on the basis of spinners.Image Credit source: AFP
After losing several consecutive matches, Pakistan cricket team got a chance to taste a victory in Test cricket. The Pakistani team had defeated England in the second test match played in Multan. The same plan on which Pakistan won this match was also implemented in the ongoing third Test match in Rawalpindi. The result was that after a long gap of 142 years, a special sight was seen in Test cricket. Like the previous Test, in this match too, Pakistan trapped England with its spin attack and it so happened that no fast bowler bowled a single ball in the entire innings, which has happened only for the second time in the history of Test cricket.
Pakistan again dependent on spinners
The third and last match of the Test series started from Thursday 24 October at Pindi Cricket Stadium. As was discussed and expected, only the spinners got help on the pitch prepared for this match. Pakistan had defeated England in the last Test match on the basis of spin attack, which was its first Test win at home since February 2021. The spin pair of Noman Ali and Sajid Khan had helped Pakistan win. Both bowlers took all 20 wickets (both innings combined) of England in that Test. Even only these two bowled in the second innings of that match.
This day was seen after 142 years
In such a situation, in the third test also, the Pakistani team adopted the same formula and started the bowling with both the spinners. Pakistan also got the benefit of this and the England team got bundled out for only 267 runs. During this period, both of them bowled continuously for 42 overs, after which there was a change in bowling for the first time but then one spinner, Zahid Mahmood, and after some time, another spinner, Salman Ali Aga, was made to bowl.
England batted for a total of 68.2 overs and all these overs were bowled by four spinners together. In this way, this happened only for the second time in Test cricket when not a single ball was bowled by a fast bowler in the first innings of a match. Earlier in 1882, Australia's Joey Palmer and Edwin Evans had bowled 115 consecutive overs (with 4 balls each) against England. That means, this day was seen in Test cricket after 142 years.
Pakistan also had to suffer loss
Once again the star of the first innings was off-spinner Sajid Khan, who took 6 wickets. Sajid had taken 7 wickets in the first innings of the last test. Whereas left arm spinner Noman Ali, who took 3 wickets in the first innings of Multan Test, took the same number of wickets in the first innings here too. Leg spinner Zahid Mahmood got one wicket. However, the condition of Pakistan itself was not good and by the end of the first day's play, it lost only 3 wickets for 73 runs. The only difference was that for England, the spinners took 2 wickets while the fast bowler got 1 wicket.
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