I have compared Marco Jansen to a giant praying mantis. He is all limbs; it feels as if every part of him is too long. A woollen jumper that sags when wet. His wingspan is so enormous that he could itch his ankle without bending over. He doesn’t look like a fast bowler. If anything, he’s more of a skinny small forward in basketball, or - you know - a praying mantis.

But that is not his animal; I got it wrong.

Recently, I casually threw into a talkSPORT chat that this man could be the best Test bowler ever. People did not like that.

There is some format bleed on this; Jansen has not been a great white-ball seamer. But in Tests, he averages 20.8 and he’s 26-years-old. Of all the fast bowlers with 95 wickets before turning 27, he has the second-best mark.

The bowler ahead of him is Shaun Pollock.

Some bowlers are almost done athletically by 27; Pollock’s back and hamstrings were held together with staples by this point. The great young quick who could seam and swing the ball was replaced by a stiff English county bowler.

Pollock was a bowler with a lot of skills and natural advantages, but no bowlers in history have more tools than Jansen.

Pollock is better than the lanky left-armer at swing and seam, and was a lot more accurate. But what he doesn’t have is the full range of weapons of the young bowler.

That is because there are very few bowlers in the history of cricket who have the array of methods to get someone out that Jansen has. He has seven, and he’s not far from having all eight.

A praying mantis has one way to kill its victim; an octopus is almost limitless in comparison thanks to its eight arms. Jansen could be a magic octopus destroying everything in front of him.

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Marco Madness

It was getting towards lunch on Day 4 of the second South Africa vs Australia Test when Marco Jansen came back on for his second spell. The pitch at St. George’s Park in Gqeberha was easing out. The ball was softer too. Australia had Steve Smith and Matt Renshaw set. This was the crucial moment in the game, because South Africa also taken early wickets, and then conditions eased off as the ball got older. Smith had stopped scoring entirely, Renshaw was in strike rotation mode.

The 30th over was kind of the tipping point. If Australia held out for the next five overs, that might have been enough to build a score. If not to get near South Africa, at least take time out of the game.

Instead, Jansen bowled a back of a length ball Renshaw pushed it to gully and was caught. Two deliveries later he got an even fuller ball to leap up at Alex Carey and Australia’s chance was gone.

If you look at his five wickets, four were from bounce, and one was on a length nipping back past Travis Head’s bat. So when the pitch was there to bowl on a length, he did his bit, and as it eased off, he went back to his length.

When South Africa batted, they lost Ryan Rickleton in the 40th over after he had looked much more settled. From then on in, Australia found wickets almost impossible.

Pat Cummins was Australia’s last wicket, and he was out in the 43rd over.

Jansen basically stopped Australia from getting to the period where the pitch could have been easier. Now, maybe Australia still screw it up; their batting is paper thin. But by not reaching that stage of the game, they were done.

The pitch helped, but Jansen helped far more.

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South Africa played two innings in the second Test against Australia, over three days. They faced a wet, green pitch first, then a soft ball on a drier surface at Gqeberha.

So Marco Jansen and Temba Bavuma both made runs, but in different worlds.

For the South African captain, the conditions were tough, and outside of Ryan Rickleton, none of his top order could work it out. But he did something that others could not; he played late.

Well, actually, that is not quite true. Matthew Breetzke plays as late as anyone in the game, but he played one shot away from his body, and he was gone.

Bavuma didn’t chase, or hit early, he waited for the ball to be under his eyes, and he defended or scored. It sounds simple, but he kept his feet in a box, which AB de Villiers talks about. But he also didn’t reach, prod, or push. That means his hands and feet were in on the plan.

This was a proper grown-up hundred. Outside of Josh Hazlewood’s illness, Australia had everything their own way. They would have hoped for a 175-ish total. And Bavuma said no.

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Boland’s Bombs

David Bedingham is doing the balcony lean; his head is almost down on his shoulder as he watches the many replays of his golden duck. The TV cameras show where it pitched, the grip, the line, and his head position — on repeat.

Bedingham made errors; he wanted to hit the ball, so he chased it, walked across the stumps and not down the wicket, and he got an outside edge.

The part of this not yet mentioned is that he was facing Scott Boland.

And facing the Aussie seamer on a pitch like the one at Gqeberha for the second South Africa-Australia Test is like disarming a bomb in 0.2 seconds.

It is going to move in both directions; he drops his head and bowls over the top, meaning the ball comes from a weird angle. He is fast enough to rush you and even hit the bat hard. And he never misses. He is just there the entire time.

So Bedingham’s job is disarm a Boland ball, almost every time.

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Temba Bavuma has been put on a pedestal for South Africa. In fact, he is standing on a box. But again, for his country. This is a viral ad for the shirt sponsor.

But over the last two years, especially since the WTC win, Bavuma has gone from one of his country’s most abused cricketers to one of its most praised. He’s on a pedestal, as he’s delivered a World Test Championship and held up their batting as well.

This is the age of Bavuma, a top-five-ranked Test batter and one of the game’s most respected leaders. And hosting Australia after Sandpapergate should be his crowning glory, making him the new king of South African cricket.

The stat that keeps being attached to his name is that he’s won 91.7% of his matches in charge. Which is a hugely sexy number. But from only 12 games, even if one includes a title and the other is beating India away, it’s not a massive sample.

He earned that pedestal, but like his form with the bat, it is all quite new and shallow. It is one of the best transformations in cricket history. He has never been this high.

This loss to Australia was his 13th in charge, and for Bavuma’s South Africa, that is not a lucky number.

Losing one match to Australia shouldn’t dent his reputation too much. But this match has shown that his new empire doesn’t look built on the strongest foundations. This week, Matt Renshaw dismantled Temba Bavuma with bat and, weirdly, ball.

The problem with being put on a pedestal is that once you are there, people wait for you to fall back down.

This is a team that, brick by brick, play for each other. They are supposed to be more than the sum of their parts. This week they crumbled.

***

South Africa has one of the best bowling lineups in the world. Kagiso Rabada is a wicket in human form, Marco Jansen’s best ball is unplayable, Lungi Ngidi averages 23 in Tests, plus they have a collection of fast bowlers that barely get a game, and two fantastic spinners who happen to turn the ball in different directions. Throw in Jansen’s batting, and Wiaan Mulder (with Corbin Bosch/Senuran Muthusamy), and you often get five bowling options that all do different jobs.

It is not a perfect unit, but it terms of diversity, skills and talent, it goes pretty damn hard.

For the first Test, Rabada was still injured, as was Ngidi. But even without those two, this was a fantastic attack.

However, it did not bowl well.

Marco Jansen chases magic balls, and he averages 21 in Test cricket. So it would be unfair to say he is part of the problem overall. But usually he is bowling with Rabada, someone who is going to bowl the same delivery on a loop. With Rabada injured, Jansen looked like he was only interested in wicket-taking deliveries at his end, hoping his partner would keep the pressure on. Wiaan Mulder can swing the ball, but even at 128ks, he is not deadly accurate. These two started on day one with the best bowling conditions of the match, took two early wickets, and still wasted the new ball.

That is how talented they are.

But when Australian batters got in, this lack of patience and consistency was used against them.

Simon Harmer’s issues slightly exacerbated this. Not the scoring rate, but because he looked stiff and was obviously pushing out his faster ball. Then Keshav Maharaj struggled to keep the ball in the same spot. So the combined issue was that their two finger-spinners struggled for venom and pressure.

In a five-bowler attack, only Anrich Nortje was on the spot. Which is odd, because he is so fast that you expect him to be the leak.

Compare that to Australia: Mitch Starc started the Test off his best. The footmarks got into his head. He bowled around when he should have been over the wicket. He couldn’t hit the spot, so he delivered more loose balls.

Yet Australia absorbed this. Nathan Lyon came on, became a threat, and never missed. While Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins were their normal selves.

South Africa had a genuine fifth bowler, yet they felt a man short. And Australia had four, and one struggled, and it didn’t matter.

Some of the blame has to go on Jansen not playing much first-class cricket, Nortje warming up by bowling in T20 matches in Malahide, and Harmer clearly not being 100%. South Africa haven’t played many Tests, so the administrators need to be held to account for that.

Bavuma was let down by his bowlers, but he can’t hide behind that, because he wasn’t at his best either.

You can see that on Aiden Markram’s confused face. He is pointing at deep square leg, and now yelling to Temba Bavuma.

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This is the last ball of the over, and he wants his captain to bring in every boundary rider. South Africa desperately needed to hear this, because for the previous almost 50 overs, they just let Matt Renshaw steal runs on the fourth, fifth, and sixth balls.

Steal is the wrong term; Mulder said that the big Queenslander had been fantastic at keeping the strike. But Markram’s frustration was from South Africa letting Renshaw bogart the strike.

Mitch Starc was out in the 82nd over, and for ages, South Africa allowed Renshaw to find a single on the fifth ball because they seemed to think he would eventually just get out, or they could bowl a magic single delivery to Nathan Lyon. Neither happened.

The ball was soft, but South Africa were softer. No one on the team seemed upset by this. Sometimes a sweeper would come in, but rarely all of them and usually too late. There were always places to score singles. They never locked Renshaw down.

It felt like the teams had an agreement: South Africa were happy to get one or two balls at Lyon, and Renshaw was okay with just ticking the scorecard over.

It was great Markram stood up, but why on earth did it take so long for an intervention? This is not just Bavuma. They have Markram, Maharaj, Harmer and Bedingham. These are real cricketers who know the game. Plenty of experience, and they had a collective brain fart that lasted half a day.

Even after Nathan Lyon was out, it continued. In the 136th over, with Josh Hazlewood on five from nine, Renshaw pushed an effortless single to a sweeper on the fifth ball. They just didn’t get it. And that is when they lost the game.

Australia could have been bowled out for 180, it looked like Renshaw was going to run out of partners for his hundred, and then again for his 150, until finally it seemed like his 200 was inevitable because South Africa did nothing.

Dan Gallan said, “Renshaw tiptoed his way to a big hundred”. And that knock won the game.

Australia tiptoed their way to a 214-run victory.

It wasn’t just the strike on the final deliveries of overs. When the ball wasn’t doing much, South Africa’s main threat was hoping another magic ball would come, but usually allowing Australia to get away from any pressure.

Bavuma is used to throwing the ball to a fantastic Test option on a friendly pitch, and taking a wicket.

In this Test, we saw what happens on a flatter (though certainly not a road) surface when that is your plan. They seemed to have little, or no, plan B. It was hope Jansen bowled his unicorn stuff, Nortje is fast, Harmer outthinks someone or Maharaj rags one.

There was no manufacturing of wickets.

Obviously on win percentages, it is hard to argue that Ben Stokes is a better captain than Bavuma. But for all the English leader’s weaknesses, he would not have let the game drift as his much-vaunted South African colleague did.

Despite many times when disruption was needed, he felt the opposite. When he did put a fielder in a funky spot, it felt 20 overs too late. They never fully committed to any bouncer spells, and when they did, executed them poorly. Bavuma would not gamble, take risks, or play on Australian egos.

He just expected his bowlers to take wickets at their normal rates, and when they didn’t happen, he stood still.

At times, if someone had exchanged South African fielders for large blow-up dolls, the results would have been the same. That is probably true, and undoubtedly unfair.

But Bavuma hasn’t captained much at Test level, and almost all the 12 previous Tests he’s been involved in have been low-scoring.

No team had ever made this many runs in the first innings against his side. In fact, only in one of his matches in charge has a team gone past 260. How do you learn creative captaincy tactics when your head is spinning from all the wickets?

This is a bowling era, this is a bowling team, and at home the pitches have been even more bowlery. His leadership is about planning, getting buy-in, and leading by professionalism. His tactics have been fine, but it is a little like watching Ricky Ponting captain. What is your plan A? Glenn McGrath. What is plan B? Shane Warne. What is plan C? Glenn McGrath again.

Bavuma was completely let down by his attack, but he also didn’t give anything back to them.

One issue is that South Africa relies so heavily on their bowlers, and this time they left it to their batting to save them. Narrator: it did not.

When it comes to runs, this team is mid. They are the fourth team in Test history to have seven players average in the 30s. This is partly due to the modern era deflating batting averages, and keepers being better with the bat. But even so, this is a weird anomaly: everyone can hold a bat, few make you worry.

Break down this team, who is the guy most likely to make a 200?

It is not Aiden Markram, who has never passed 152 in Tests, yet has in ODIs. It is not Temba Bavuma, who is the king of the 50s. It should not be Wiaan Mulder, though we are all screaming it now because of his triple hundred. Kyle Verreynne is a keeper at seven, so pretty unlikely. At five is Tristan Stubbs, who on potential makes sense, but this was his 33rd first-class match.

That leaves us with Ryan Rickelton, who has a Test double century, but in 29 innings has passed 50 three times. And David Bedingham, who has passed 150 seven times in first-class cricket. Neither really feels like grind-you-into-the-dust batter.

This is a team of 30-odds and great ball striking, but there are no big daddy knocks.

Matt Renshaw has made two Test hundreds, and both are past 150. That might be a fluke, but it feels like who he is as a player. And for South Africa, they don’t have those types.

Even in the field, they let it go. Well, one player did. Bavuma is one of the best fielders in the world, but one afternoon he missed three simple balls, walking past one to allow a single, and twice the ball just went through him. It was like his entire game was unravelling piece by piece.

He didn’t make any runs. He can argue he was unlucky to be dismissed playing the reverse sweep caught at slip, but he was batting horribly before that. And in the second innings he was out to Matt Renshaw. Which is one he can’t argue away.

This was one of the worst Tests of his career. His team were terrible and so was he. He wasn’t knocked off the pedestal; he seemed to step off it meekly. The foundational bricks he built, might have cracks in them.

This week South Africa were less than the sum of their parts.

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Smith and Mount Marco

Recently I saw Steve Smith play in a T20 in Dublin, and yet today he showed more intent than he did in that innings. Obviously pitches play a part, but it was clear he thought Australia needed fast runs, and he was the man to give them.

In the first innings, he slapped Keshav Maharaj down the ground a couple of times. So when he did the same to Simon Harmer in this innings, it made sense. In 2010, he made his debut against Pakistan in England, and in his second match, at Headingley, he kept hitting Danish Kaneria into the empty stand.

So we know this is his shot against spin, no issue there.

But it happened after Anrich Nortje hit him on the head. And there were a few shots where it looked like he was concussed. We have previous on that, because it occurred at Lord’s after Jofra Archer hit him.

What was crazy in the Harmer over was Smith had hit a six over long-on’s head once, and he tried to do it again. It is his shot against this bowling type, but he’s also not a power player. On top of all that, at long on was Marco Jansen and his 12-foot wingspan.

The giant South African did fumble the ball, before finally taking it.

But think about Smith’s batting brain. It is as big as anyone’s before him. Would he take this option normally? So either the third innings declaration played a part, or he was still shook up from the knock on his magnificent head.

Nortje nonsense

South Africa had a tiny chance of a comeback when Anrich Nortje splattered Nic Maddinson’s stumps. And at that point, Australia were slightly jumpy.

Then Nortje bowled one great over of short stuff. Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne hopped around quite a bit. So they went with bouncers, but Australia hammered them.

One of the reasons is the field. Instead of having a full defensive Wagner field, they kept all their normal fielders, and just put out three players, two behind square on the leg side with a deep point.

After that, Marnus hooked a four in the gap. These things happen. But then he played a back-foot cover drive past the deep point. Next over Smith was facing, and he hit one to the right of the offside sweeper, then left, and then right again.

Bavuma probably should have given more deep fielders, but it was also a bit unfortunate that there were five boundaries either side of the fielders.

However, they were bowling short and fast without full cover against two guys who can handle it.

And that little moment is kind of what broke South Africa. Maybe they had to take a chance to bowl short, but did they have to do it without the fielders out? Australia wanted to score anyway, so why not play on their egos?

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Spinners are seen as older-ball bowlers. But that has never quite been true, it’s just that you wouldn’t waste a new pill on them when the conditions suit the quicks. Everyone loves a hard ball. It spins off the seam, slides off the smooth and bounces more.

The last bit matters most for Nathan Lyon, one of cricket’s best overspinners. The newish ball helps his extra bounce.

From overs 18-30, he has the most wickets for Australia. Now, we only have that stat for the modern era, so it’s warped. But it also makes sense.

That is when the ball is more likely to bounce higher. And it holds up for Lyon in Asia as much as it does elsewhere. More crucially, he is so much better than the rest of the world at this.

On the third day of Australia’s first Test against South Africa, he was at it again. This time he tormented Temba Bavuma outside offstump until the South African captain gave up and went for the reverse sweep. And what dismissed him was a top edge from the extra bounce.

But then Kyle Verreynne did the same thing later.

In the history of shot data, there have been 194 dismissals playing the reverse sweep. Of those, 18 have been caught at slip. To have two of them on one day is unfortunate.

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Renshaw’s runs

It might sound weird, but Matt Renshaw knows what he does well. Sure, most batters do. But it is rare for them to be so clear-cut. If you bowl seam outside off, he will leave the ball. If he needs to score from it, he’ll move outside the line and somehow middle it to backward square leg.

And yet, he is not a run machine. Even two seasons back he was struggling in the Shield.

When he faces spin, he sweeps, reverse-sweeps, and also goes down the track. Keeping him on strike can be tough, because he often has two, or even three fielders out on the rope. So he can go at his own pace without ever feeling rushed.

When Renshaw first played, he was really limited, and it held him back. Now he’s more rounded and probably Australia’s best spin player since Steve Smith (with apologies to Peter Handscomb).

This was the innings of a man who knows his game inside out. On the wagon wheel, he scores a lot through covers and point. Almost all of that comes from cover-driving the spinners and reverse-sweeping them. He even - brace yourself - hit one through mid-off playing a reverse sweep.

Against the quicks, mid-off to point is almost a no-go zone.

But the difference between this Renshaw and the 20-year-old version is that if you are not bowling what he wants, he will move around the crease to find a single. So you can’t stop him scoring, and he only plays his areas.

His monumental 190 against South Africa in the first Test was a great innings, made simple. Renshaw knows what he wants to do, and does it.

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South Africa’s extras

For most of day one, I was counting the extra column, because South Africa were all over the place. They started with four leg byes, and continue to bowl like that. They had too many no balls, and even a wide. A wide. On day one of a Test with a pitch doing something. Pitiful.

19 runs from extras may not seem like a lot, but it’s ten percent of Australia’s total. And for a while leg byes were their best batter today.

And South Africa also wasted the new ball. Twelve balls were hitting the stumps in the first session. That’s with them starting with their medium pace of Wiaan Mulder. Australia couldn’t reach the deliveries to punish them.

The Anrich Nortje double strike and Travis Head’s leg side strangle made their day look much better. But even if you think South Africa are in front, they could have almost ended this game against Australia’s shaky top order. Instead, this match is very open and South Africa still have wickets to get.

The case for and against Nic Maddinson

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Zizi Mkhize has been in for three hours, over two days. He walks in late on the first, conquers opposition bowlers in fading light, and reaches a century the next morning.

This is expected from Mkhize. He’s one of the most highly rated young black batters in Johannesburg. In 2025, he was named Player of the Tournament at the CSA U16 National Week. Three months later, he did it again at the Schools SA20 finals week, taking Jeppe High, his school, to the title.

Mkhize grew up surrounded by cricket lovers. His father played, and later coached one of the handful of cricket clubs found in black townships. He watched and played against many grown-ups. But it wasn’t until he was 11 that he met an internationally successful black batter.

The century he scored over two days was at South Africa’s premier school festival. A multi-day event designed to provide young cricketers with a reference point for Tests. A black, 17-year-old left-hander with promise was on show, because of what had gone before him. He was walking a path already charted. That day, he took his steps at the ground named after the player he met when he was an 11-year-old.

They call it Temba Bavuma Oval.

As Desmond Tutu once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”

And in more ways than one, Temba is hope.

***

0.264 of a second is not long to do anything.

David Warner pushes the ball out on the offside and takes off. There is a gap in the covers, kind of. The Australian opener was known as a big hitter when he was young, but it soon became clear he was one of the best runners in the world. In terms of speed and also judging the run. But he would push hard.

This is one of those.

But it is in a gap; the only fielder close is at point, and the ball is to his left hand, so the chances of being caught short are slim.

It is a run, until it isn’t.

Temba Bavuma takes nine steps, but he still has an issue: to pick up the ball and throw with his strong hand, he needs to be on the other side of it. So he angles his run to meet the ball on his dominant side.

The skill it takes to measure this angle is breathtaking, but even after that, he has to throw the ball. The issue is that he’s still a long way from the stumps, so a normal underarm throw won’t do. Before or in an instant, he works out that this will still need overarm power, but from an underarm position. So far he has shown genius and speed, but he adds one of the most extraordinary jumps ever.

From one leg seemingly falling over, he launches his body up, allowing just enough room for a full throw from under his body.

He is flying while throwing. All while wearing shin pads from short-leg fielding.

The broadcasters time how long the ball is in his hand: 0.264 seconds, about the same as a blink.

David Warner never thought a run out was possible, and all but one time in a million, he was right.

There is no doubt that Temba Bavuma is one of the greatest athletes to ever play cricket. But this hasn’t always been a plus in South Africa. For generations, younger black African cricketers who were incredible athletes were pushed towards fast bowling. That’s where the success has been. This is a trope across all sports: follow the pattern.

So young black cricketers who bat well end up working on their pace bowling for hours on end. When you check the ledger, there are so many black fast bowlers and almost none who bat. That is a pattern that needs to break.

Perhaps with Bavuma, it did, because you couldn’t push him to bowl fast; he is simply too short. At his height, he was born to bat.

****

Every time Bavuma walked the streets of the township, he read the disc that proclaimed ‘Thami Tsolekile, Cricketer, Lives Here’ on the wall surrounding the former wicketkeeper’s home. Bavuma probably never got to watch the three Tests that Tsolekile featured in, but he saw Tsolekile’s signed Test shirt in the clubhouse from the time he was nine years old.

Those symbols can be enough. Bavuma and his mates played cricket at every street and every corner. A few metres from his house, there is a strip of tarmac they called Karachi because of the unpredictable bounce it generated. It was cracked and unevenly patched in many places. Here, the future South African captain sharpened his skills against the turning ball.

If they had Karachi for spin, they had the MCG for quicks. They named this strip after the Australian field because it was ideal for high-end pace. Street cricket had no age restrictions. It wasn’t uncommon to see older and stronger teenagers steaming in to bowl to pre-adolescents. Bavuma’s technique was regularly tested by 15-year-olds on these strips when he was only nine. From a young age, the ball was around his ears at pace.

His maternal uncle, Tengo Sokanyile, drilled the fundamentals into him. Sokanyile is cricket-mad and he introduced Bavuma to the sport when he was only a few months old. Soon, Sokanyile was throwing underarm and guiding Bavuma’s technique.

It helped that Rubusana Avenue, the street Bavuma grew up on, was just around the corner from Langa Cricket Club, Sokanyile’s second home. He chaired the club.

In 2015, a few months after his Proteas debut, a graffiti artist painted a giant mural of Bavuma overlooking the streets that helped mould him. He was a street cricketer, who became a Test player. He was the boy who walked these streets, and now the man who ruled them.

****

“When you do well, transformation is not spoken about but when you do badly, transformation is thrown at the top of the agenda. I have a serious problem with that.”

Temba Bavuma’s career has never been just about cricket. People who say you need to take the politics out of sport never truly understand that for some athletes, their identity is political. Bavuma can never only bat; he is more than runs. That is not his choice; it is his reality. His form is politics.

When he was first selected, there were always subplots and subtext. He needed to make twice as many runs to win some people over, and half as many for others. He was more of a totem than a batter.

After calling his mother when he was first chosen for South Africa, he shared the news with Geoffrey Toyana a few minutes later.

Toyana was a second-generation black cricketer. His father, Gus, played when there was nothing beyond club cricket for players of colour.

Toyana turned professional at a time when teams didn’t hesitate to pick a black batter. But then used them at No.9 or No.10, even when they didn’t bowl. They were professional fielders.

The message was clear: they were in there to tick quota boxes. They were in the game, but were not part of the game.

It didn’t matter that Toyana was the first black batter to be in the top 20 run-scorers in a single season. He was still regarded as a ‘quota’ player. Toyana, the first black franchise coach in South Africa, didn’t say much when Bavuma shared the news with him. He couldn’t, because he simply hugged him and wept.

“I am black, that’s my skin. But I play cricket because I love it.”

****

Bavuma was bullied at school, the year after he graduated.

Every cricket culture finds its players in a slightly different way. Australia’s method is through clubs, but in South Africa, where you go to school matters. Over the last three decades, the vast majority of cricketers have come from private schools that churn out players at an obscene level.

This causes problems for most of the poorer kids, but in black African societies it can end careers before they start. It means South Africa is always picking from a smaller catchment, or hoping the best young poor players get a scholarship.

For batting, it matters even more. Facilities are so important. Bowlers can come from the beach or a cow paddock. Batters need high-quality pitches and nets; most of the best players in the world have access to great schools or incredible clubs.

Bavuma was good enough to get two schools. First SACS (South African College), a posh educational institute, ironed out the kinks in his game. Then St David’s Marist Inanda put the finishing touches on it.

Bavuma started school a year earlier than most South African children, so he matriculated at 16. Instead of taking a gap year or furthering his studies, he chose a post-matric year at St David’s. This gave him unfettered access to the school’s facilities and coaches for another 12 months, and also a viable shot at playing SA U19.

The system built to exclude him became the one he used to become a professional while still at school.

But this is where the bullying starts. St David’s had fine coaches and facilities, but that didn’t make it a cricket school. Major international players came from Affies, Grey College, and KES. St David’s wasn’t really a high-performing sports school, so the extra post-matriculation year what was common at the other places, wasn’t there.

So instead of embracing their star athlete, a rumour started that he’d flunked his exams, and that was why he was staying. Many questioned why a scholarship was being wasted on a failure. Soon his peers, the youngsters, and even teachers bullied him.

Bavuma was an outsider many times over, an athlete at a non-sport first school. A township boy amongst fee-paying students. Black, when many were white.

But he was also from Langa.

Like many townships, the location is prone to moments of madness. Residents administer mob justice to criminals, and most of them do not survive. Bavuma hadn’t turned 10 when he first witnessed one of those acts.

Bullying is bad; Bavuma had seen worse.

***

Bavuma had to score. Because he was on trial for every single run. He needed each one to justify his selection. When he failed, a section of the populace made it an indictment of an entire race. But also, when he didn’t make runs, another section pined for them. There was no such thing as a low-pressure knock.

In Tests, for the third innings, when you have a lead, these are the easiest runs to knock up. Bavuma can’t even play those, because every stroke was part of a conversation he never entered - but also never left.

Bavuma made his debut in December 2014. His second century was March 2023. He had batting talent, but looked like he’d been chosen too soon.

A magnificent 95* against Australia in March 2018 seemed to encapsulate his career: promising, but frustrating. For his critics, of course, it was a sign of black mediocrity, and they had the stats to prove it. The lack of hundreds wasn’t the only issue, his average was one of the lowest compared to other batters in his position.

At this point, he simply didn’t look like a Test player. And soon, he wasn’t one.

***

South African cricketers were suspicious of Temba Bavuma. Coming from outside the main schools, they often hadn’t seen much of him. Many of them had lived through the quota system, watching young black African batters in teams not make runs. Others were still in a racist mindset.

But as bad as his treatment in the game could be, those pushing him did damage too. In 2014, he made his Test debut in a year he averaged 32 in first-class cricket, largely because of a 400-run partnership he shared with Rilee Rossouw against an Australian A attack with Michael Neser and Chadd Sayers.

That is not ideal, but you can see why they chose him for Tests. The weird thing is, they stopped there.

It took two years for him to get a chance in an ODI. His third was more than five years after his Test debut; it was against the World Cup-winning English team, and he made 98 to chase down their target easily.

For a player with his skill against spin and his ability to rotate strike, it seems almost criminal that the format he was best suited to was the one where they didn’t push him.

Then at the same time, as if annoyed by their previous error, they decided to play him in T20s.

Bavuma is so not suited to that format, that in the first SA20 he went undrafted. The market knew what South African cricket refused to believe. They made him captain of a format he shouldn’t play.

It got so bad for the national side that it looked like he might have to drop himself midway through a World Cup.

Cricket South Africa pushed Temba Bavuma as far as they could in Tests, and then fully committed to him in T20s. But they were apprehensive in the one place that mattered most.

It shows the weird environment he was in: people either didn’t believe in him at all, or way too much.

****

“You are absolutely shit.” - Ben Stokes, Newlands, 2016.

No, that is not exactly what he said.

Temba Bavuma has just edged the ball back past his stumps, and Stokes runs down to scream something at him. Bavuma hears it, but he’s in a bubble. This is a rare error for him as his team struggles; he can’t help but find the middle of that bat. Tripping into effortless cover drives, short-king pull shots, and a guide through backward point that is almost art.

The bubble pops after his 50; England tighten up. They start to take him seriously, and the runs slow down as the moment gets to him. He has never been this close before. He is very tense as he attempts another cover drive, but it’s a failure; it takes the edge and flies down between slip and third towards the rope. Moeen Ali is slow to pick it up, so it gets past him to the boundary.

An edge, a mistake, but a glorious one.

When Bavuma scores his maiden Test century, it isn’t just a hundred. He was the first black player to reach the milestone for the Proteas.

There had been 19 five-wicket hauls by black bowlers. And it had been 17 years since Makhaya Ntini’s debut.

There have been more than two million runs scored in Test cricket, but Bavuma’s runs stand out. That lucky boundary taking him from 96 to 100, isn’t just four runs. It was a blow struck for the millions of South Africans who were ignored, forgotten, and banned.

It was his runs, and all of theirs too.

Bavuma doesn’t celebrate like a man who knows his history, but like a cricketer who needed this. He runs around the pitch, jumps and thrusts his bat forward as he screams.

Stokes did not say, “You are absolutely shit.” According to Bavuma, he said, “You are so shit, I don’t know what you are doing here.”

Bavuma’s reply a few hours later could have been: “making a hundred”.

***

Temba Bavuma should have been dropped by South Africa. By 2020, his career hadn’t worked.

For most of his early years, he shared the ground with some of the greatest players to ever bat. Then they retired, just as the pace-playing pandemic started. South Africa suddenly found themselves in their most barren era. This meant that while his form wasn’t good enough, it was an odd time to drop him.

But something had to change, so Bavuma found himself out of the team.

However, South Africa still struggled. The young players didn’t work, the older vets weren’t up to it and the Kolpak pros couldn’t get the job done either.

When he was in primary school, Bavuma’s class was asked to write down what they hoped to achieve in adulthood. He listed three things: being an accountant, meeting the president, and playing cricket for South Africa. He attained his Bachelor of Commerce degree in 2014.

There is something very Bavuma in this mix. He had the highest dreams, and a functioning backup. Hope and pragmatism. Not many people walk this line.

Being dropped is hard for any player, but he instantly went to work. He was told he needed the weight of runs to reclaim his spot, and he took it personally, hammering a career-best 180 in domestic cricket in his next outing. He returned to the South African side in less than a month.

That is not a long time, but in this quick turnaround, he underwent an incredible metamorphosis.

It was the beginning of the second phase of his Test career. Bavuma hit a half-century in his second outing on his comeback. He followed that with his best year (till then) in 2021.

Bavuma the batter has always had distinctive attributes. He’s been the smallest guy on most teams. His lack of height meant he couldn’t generate the power needed to hit the ball far. He compensated with his speed between the wickets. He steals singles and finds twos.

He’s also distinctive visually, which means he has often been part of viral memes.

The 2023 World Cup captains press conference trended for Bavuma because it looks like he falls asleep on his chair. Here he is surrounded by Pat Cummins, Rohit Sharma and Kane Williamson, all expected to be greats from their teen years, yet it is the South African skipper, the outsider, who is so comfortable he almost dozes off. This is a man who knows who he is, and isn’t fazed even though he always stands out.

He was made for modern virality, whether it was his awkward high fives with Kagiso Rabada or the many times he had to stand next to Marco Jansen, who made him look like a small boy.

However, in the second stage of his career, Bavuma transitioned from being a short man to a leader with great stature.

South Africa were making no runs and always mid-collapse. He was required to hold things together. He did so slowly, in his own method.

It was in this period that he developed a reputation for gritty knocks. He made runs that were worth more than their numerical value. Bavuma’s seven half-centuries in 26 innings from 2020 to 2022 were gold-dust. His average of 42.4 was 12 points higher than the combined average (30.1) of the rest of his teammates in the same period.

We have something called the Good Areas Most Improved Test Player. Every two years we pick nominees and then a winner. Bavuma was nominated for two straight editions. Think about that: he improved enough to get nominated one time, and then improved way more on his last development.

That is something special. He found a new best, and instantly beat it.

At Lord’s, in 2003, Ntini sank to his knees and kissed the pitch. He had just dismissed Steve Harmison to become the first South African bowler to capture 10 wickets in a Test at the home of cricket. It wasn’t just a groundbreaking moment for South Africa; it was a seminal occasion for black cricketers.

At Lord’s two decades later, the same crowd would applaud another man who couldn’t even run after scoring 66.

That half-century was one of six across 23 innings, from 2023 till now. He also reached triple figures three times in this period. He is still a 50s man, and maybe he always will be. Only now, it’s his average too.

In an era where almost no batter in the world has made runs, the one that many South Africans didn’t believe in, and Ben Stokes thought was shit, has stood the tallest. There have been 43 players in the last five years who have scored 1500 runs; five of them have a higher average than him. Bavuma’s has been 49 in that time, 19 higher than Stokes.

It has been a very long walk, but finally, he is one of the best bats in the world.

***

Temba Bavuma is walking around Lord’s; his teammates are a long way behind. There is no doubt who the leader is.

South Africa have had 18 Test captains since readmission. Only eight have led the side in 10 or more Tests. Three of them – Shaun Pollock, Hashim Amla, and Bavuma – averaged more with the bat as captains than they did as regular players. Pollock and Amla had win percentages of 53.8 (26 Tests) and 50 (14 Tests). Bavuma has led in only 12 Tests so far, but his win percentage is 91.7.

South Africa’s most important captain since readmission is Graeme Smith. He led in 109 of the 117 Tests he played. He was on the field when Ntini took his ten-fer. Smith conquered the world by managing a team of talented individuals. He is a giant in real terms, and for South Africa.

Bavuma can never have a career like this. But he won with a side where the whole was far greater than the sum of its parts.

As incredible as Bavuma’s impact has been on the cricket team, it has been even greater for his country.

“When I walk on the field, it’s not just me walking on the field. I understand the significance. It’s about being a role model and an inspiration to kids, especially black African kids,” Bavuma had said after his maiden Test century. Smith was a great captain, but this is a different leadership.

New Balance made an ad for him recently, where he said, “I’ve been called a lot of names in my life. Some names hurt.”

His first name resonates most. He was born in 1990, when South Africa was working its way out of apartheid. His grandmother hoped for a better future.

“The name I’ve been called the most is Temba. My grandmother named me Temba because it means hope.”

Decades later, he launched the Temba Bavuma Foundation. It provides bursaries to talented young players and feeds society’s downtrodden, among other things. Mostly, it gives what his grandmother wanted, hope.

Bavuma is not a great player in a conventional sense. He lacks power in T20, needs a special kind of team to be good in ODIs, and has made the best of what he has to be above average in Tests.

His greatness is that he can walk around Lord’s as the leader of a nation that never even hoped for something like this.

Earlier, he had come in at 70 for 2 and tried to make a statement. He played a shot a ball, and ran really hard.

However, his scoring rate, and more importantly, speed and athleticism were halted by a hamstring strain. Soon he was limping, and looking like a child wearing pads for the first time. He became crease-bound, doing little more than a light jog, like Arjuna Ranatunga in the middle overs of ODIs.

Bavuma was playing on skill. For years, he was told he didn’t have any. Now, it is all he has, and it’s giving his nation the chance of their first major win.

But while his grandmother named him Hope, his teammates went with Malume, which means uncle. For many in the modern world, Unc is an insult, but for Bavuma, it is the ultimate compliment.

At Lord’s, the crowd sees the older, wiser, ground-bound Bavuma, and this is his uncle knock. It is full of wisdom and cunning, while lacking in athleticism and speed. This innings completely stops Australia. On his way to a huge score in this chase, he’s surprised by a Pat Cummins ball and leaves at 217 for 3.

Bavuma has changed so much as a batter, but still gets out before the big scores. However, it is okay today, as he doesn’t have to do it alone. Aiden Markram makes the hundred before the middle order steps up. South Africa have chased against Australia at Lord’s to win the WTC. His team has won its first major ICC trophy. He holds cricket’s mace as he steps onto the Lord’s outfield with his team behind him.

As always, Temba Bavuma walks, so others can follow.

Pakistan’s Test bowling attack in the late 1990s should have been illegal. They had Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq, Shoaib Akhtar and Shahid Afridi. The talent level of those bowlers made for probably one of the best attacks we have ever seen.

But that isn’t even the most special thing about that attack. Akram was left-arm and could swing the ball. Waqar was right-arm and could swing the ball. Akhtar was right-arm and very, very, very fast. Saqlain started as an offspinner and ended up as a mystery spinner. And Afridi was a legspinner. That is five different kinds of bowlers, all at the same time. Of course, if both Akhtar and Waqar played at their peaks, were a little bit more similar.

But essentially, Pakistan had was one of the most skilled bowling attacks in the world, which was also one of the most diverse.

There was something for everyone. It was always sexy and incredible, and the next bowler was better than the last. It was so much fun. You didn’t want to miss a moment of them bowling, because if you did, you might miss a new delivery being invented or a legstump being chopped into 34 different pieces. You just had to watch them bowl.

Purely as an entertainment product, I don’t think we’ve ever had anything better than this attack.

Let’s look at the opposite of that, and a bowler called Michael Yardy. He started as a first-class batter who bowled very, very occasionally. And then when T20 came along, this guy thought to himself, “Well, I can actually bowl a little bit. Maybe occasionally I’ll bowl the left-arm finger spin I bowl in the nets.”

Over time, he sort of developed this method that was muscular and strong, and about angles and lengths… and he became one of the best spoiler bowlers in the world.

It was very, very hard to score off Yardy at his best. His batting, which was originally why he was a professional cricketer, had almost nothing to do with the fact that England were picking him in their sides. They really just wanted that kind of spoiler bowler, and he was the absolute epitome of it. He was also every bit as boring to watch as Pakistan’s Test bowling attack was exciting to watch.

But that also makes sense because in Test cricket, you won’t always get units like that Pakistan one. The ultimate aim in Test cricket is to get 20 wickets. You’re not always going for a wicket every ball, but you’re always trying to plan or set up a trap.

But in T20 cricket, especially in that Yardy era, you were primarily trying to make sure that no one could score. If you got wickets on the back of that, fine. But spoiling the ability to hit boundaries, or even twos, was a big part of it.

So even if you love T20 cricket, it would be hard to watch it and think, “This is a much more interesting game of bowling than Test cricket.”

But if you’ve been watching over the last couple of years, these two things have kind of switched up on us.

T20 bowlers are now going for wickets and have these wildly diverse bowling attacks. And the Test guys, well, they’re pretty much all bowling the wobble-ball.

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This is the album cover of Sean Combs, or P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, or whatever name you know him by. He was a musician and producer, who is in a lot of trouble these days.

I took this photo.

I was on holiday in Paris at the Pompidou Centre with my wife, saw a bunch of lovely shapes and colours, and thought, “That will make a really good photo.” So I clicked it, and I never thought about it until Sony Music started hounding me over and over again, saying that they wanted it for the cover of that album.

They then paid me for that photo. Not a lot, because I had to spend a lot to recreate it and make it look good enough for an album cover, and I didn’t even have the original anymore.

Based on this, could you say I was a professional photographer? I don’t think actual professional photographers would feel that way. I think they would say that I did something on the side, someone gave me some money for it at one stage, and then I never did anything like this ever again. I mean, if I was a professional and I got this album cover, I think I also would have gone to a P Diddy party. Luckily for me, I never actually went to one of those, otherwise I might be in trouble with the police now.

The point is, you can get paid for something but it doesn’t actually mean that you’re a professional in that field. The reason I bring this up is that many people seem confused about the concept of professionalism in cricket.

They’re like, “Well, wait a minute. People got paid before. There must’ve been professionalism.”

No.

There was just occasionally money. In cricket, professionalism has taken a very long time to take hold.

We can go back through the full history of cricket, or as near it as possible.

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Sikandar Raza had done well in the seven deliveries he bowled to Dewald Brevis, conceding just seven runs in seven balls. Two singles, a four, a bye, and three dots. On the eighth ball, the spinner decided to surprise Brevis with a bouncer.

Many batters might have been taken off-guard. But Brevis read the body cues and was ready for a short ball. He rocked back and sent it into the stands over deep midwicket. It was his second six of the innings, and Brevis did not strike another maximum in the match. But that was immaterial to the result, because Jordan Hermann and Connor Esterhuizen had done well enough at the top to set South Africa on course for a winning total.

The Namibia Cricket ground surface was not an easy one to hit sixes off, but Brevis had made it look easy during the week-long tournament. The six off Raza’s bowling was Brevis’ 16th of the Namibia T20 tri-Series which featured Zimbabwe, South Africa and the hosts, Namibia. Lhuan-dre Pretorius had the second-most with 11, while Connor Esterhuizen rounded off the players with double-digit sixes with 10.

This is not a one-off scenario. More often than not, Brevis will hit more sixes than his teammates in matches and series. He is quickly becoming South Africa’s six-hitting machine.

***

Thirty-three balls. That is how long Graeme Smith took before he struck his and South Africa’s first six in T20 cricket. They called it 20-20 cricket back then. It was October 2005 and South Africa were playing New Zealand in their maiden T20 International. Smith went on to strike 25 more sixes in his 33-innings T20I career.

Five years later, he would feature in a match against West Indies at North Sound. He faced 18 deliveries, scored 15 runs, but didn’t hit a six. No one was surprised. Smith struck a maximum every 29.6 balls he faced. Smith’s strike rate of 127.5 looks pedestrian now, but it was decent for its era. In the same match, David Miller, who was making his debut, lofted one off the fifth ball he faced.

Miller refined the art of hitting for South African cricket. He made Miller Time a thing and got everyone reciting the maxim he had inherited from his father, “if it’s in the V it’s in the tree, if it’s in the arc it’s out of the park.” Miller had children and grown-ups lifting banners that proclaimed Miller Time each time he hoisted the ball over the ropes.

As of 6 September 2026, Miller was South Africa’s all-time leader in six-hitting. He strikes a maximum every 14 deliveries he faces. That’s two sixes for each one Smith lofted. Miller has hoisted 139 sixes in 121 innings across 16 years of international cricket.

Brevis was two years old in 2005. He was learning how to hold a bat the right way when Smith was trying to get to grips with the new format. In 2006, he was facing deliveries from family members indoors with a junior bat that looked a little too big for him. Most kids that age are legside dominant. It is the natural way of swinging the bat. Though untrained, Brevis possessed a swing that allowed him to hit down the ground.

Brevis was seven when Miller was introducing himself to the T20I audience. That was a year before he was introduced to hard ball cricket. His first experience was in a tournament of sorts at Jubaweni Camp. He hauled home bags full of runs, which included more sixes than Smith and Miller’s combined lot on their T20I debuts.

However, unlike Smith and Miller, Brevis needed more time before he banged his first maximum in T20Is. Three innings, to be accurate. That sounds better when we mention that the 23-year-old faced a total of 11 balls across three matches, before he took off. Since then, he has been untouchable. Brevis hits a six in every 7.8 balls he faces.

Three years and seven days after his debut, Brevis marched into the top five six-hitters in T20Is for South Africa. Brevis is now joint-fourth on the list of players with the most sixes for the Proteas. He is tied with JP Duminy, who crunched 71 sixes in 75 innings in his 12-year T20I career. He did it in less than half the innings and from almost a third of the deliveries Duminy faced.

He is a dozen sixes behind the third-placed Aiden Markram, who 83 maximums in 73 innings. What makes this comparison impressive is that Brevis has faced 769 fewer deliveries than the Proteas captain. If Miller refined six-hitting for South Africa, Brevis is its evolution. More importantly, the maximums represent the impact Brevis has had on the format in his budding career.

Former India men’s T20I analyst Himanish Ganjoo furnished us with stats collected from T20Is, IPL, SA20, PSL, CPL, and BBL from January 2024 to 3 September 2026. They reveal that Brevis has the sixth-highest sum of runs above expectation (RAE) in T20 cricket in that period.

Brevis has a healthy mean RAE of 22.47. This means that the 23-year-old makes 22.47 runs more than the average batter every 100 balls (the average batter will be facing the same overs and has the wickets left, dealing with similar lines and lengths, and ground conditions).

Hitting the ball out of the ground is not a recently acquired skill for Brevis, he has been doing it from an early age. He raised a storm on the Andre van der Walt Oval at Waterkloof as a Grade 10 learner. Brevis lofted a few balls over the clubhouse and also rocketed one flat six that shattered through one of the small windows on the ground floor. The innings was his first for Affies’ first team at Waterkloof, but it wasn’t his first visit to the institution. One time, when he was in primary school, Brevis heaved a couple of deliveries onto the roof of the clubhouse in a match for Hennopspark against Cornwall Hill. Even at that age, he was scoring above expectation.

If we looked his runs above expectation per innings, we understand why Shukri Conrad, the South Africa coach, said that he didn’t want Brevis to change. Brevis adds 4.05 more than the average batter per knock. In a format of small margins, that could be the difference between winning and losing.

It is easy for most batters to achieve a high RAE over a short period. This is why Brevis’ numbers are so impressive. They stand up over a slightly extended period.

If Brevis gave South African T20 cricket a jolt, he gave most fans a shock to the system. They typed their meltdowns on social media, complaining that his approach was immature. He didn’t play according to the match situation, they said. They are more comfortable with a player with an average of 40 and a strike rate of 130.

But Conrad was not bothered. In February 2026, the coach stated that Brevis was the kind of player that will break your hearts one day and do something incredibly special the next.

“Consistency is really not something we look for in T20 cricket, we want an impact and I think Dewald is that player that can make an impact on the game single-handedly, and so can other players… He’s an X-factor player for us,” Conrad shared.

Brevis used to turn out for a club called Laudium CC. He joined them when he was 12. Laudium was underfunded and didn’t attract the best players in the province. That forced him to learn to carry the responsibilities of ensuring his team’s success early. In 2021, Brevis didn’t feature in all but one of Laudium’s matches, so they lost more than they won. The match he featured in was a must-win contest; defeat would have resulted in their relegation from the premier league.

True to form, Brevis carted bowlers all around the park. He batted Laudium to victory in style. The then-18-year-old launched three sixes over the cover region and lifted one above the fielder at third. The other four were on the leg side. One crashed into the sliding windows by the bar, startling drinking patrons. Three flew into the mid-wicket-cow corner region. He also carved 17 fours.

That was his only match for them for the season. Despite that, he struck the joint fourth-most sixes of the season. Brevis’ sixes translate into high impact. In the present, he has the sixth-highest impact on the list of players who have faced a minimum of 300 balls in T20 cricket since 2024.

He is the only South African in the top 10 list of players with the highest impact per 100 balls in the format.

Heinrich Klaasen had a blistering surge from 2023/24 until his international retirement. The middle order batter was a monumental loss to South Africa when he hung his gear. He has continued to tear bowling attacks apart, despite playing with a troublesome shoulder. Klaasen is eighth on the list of players with the highest impact per innings.

Brevis, who is outpacing the former Proteas star on the number of sixes for South Africa by quite a distance, is a spot lower than Klaasen on impact per innings.

There is a high likelihood that Brevis will end his career with the most sixes for South Africa. He is 68 maximums behind Miller, who has taken more 121 innings to get there. Quinton de Kock, who is in second place will push the figure close to or beyond 150, but his rate of a six every 16 balls will not put the number beyond Brevis, who is moving at twice De Kock’s speed.

Graeme Smith was 30 when he played his 33rd T20I innings. It was his last. Brevis was 23 when he reached the 33 T20I mark, and he is only getting started.

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Mohammad Abbas is not with his teammates. He is telling the curator what to do. Not with footmarks, but with the marking of the crease. It is drinks on day four of a series his team is going to lose, and he is out there making sure everything is done properly.

That is a professional cricketer.

There are over ten groundstaff at Edgbaston, every morning they go out on the surface to ensure that the crease is done right.

It fades and sinks into the ground; sometimes it looks like it’s not straight, but after day one, the line stays in the same place because, at every break in play, they make sure it does. Everyone knows this.

And yet, Mohammad Abbas wants to be positive. To him, cricket is not about vibes, or how hard you try; he is a surgeon, and he wants to ensure that something this important is absolutely perfect.

Abbas is a man of millimetres, who plays for a careless team.

Pakistan has bowled 1837 deliveries, and somehow they have overstepped on 37 no balls.

The line doesn’t move. They just don’t adjust. They can’t get it done.

Pakistan has sent out more than 20 people for this series, some never played, others shouldn’t have. But really, only Saud Shakeel and Abbas have looked like genuine Test quality– outside of Razaullah’s dirty fever dream.

As a team, they should be forgiven for being dropped into the PCB shit show, the chaos around coaches and selection. Shakeel basically pulled a Mariah Carey on the new picks, saying he did not know them. And none of this is new; the Pakistan lineup has been unprofessional for 25 years.

However, the crease does not move.

It has stayed in the same spot every single time a Pakistani cricketer has played. Whether you are a foetus like Razaullah, or Mohammad Abbas’s old, often unused arse. Just stay behind it. That is all. Keep it that simple.

For three Tests, they have made cricket look like an unknowable concept. Pakistan lost three nil in a series where no one made a hundred and one of England’s four bowlers took four (three in the very last innings) wickets. If England had all four bowlers taking wickets and a bunch of hundreds, it is technically possible they might have won this series four nil.

Watching Pakistan play is like watching a three-year-old reassemble a fart.

More than a decade ago in England, this team ruined their cricket by overstepping the line for money. This time, they overstepped the line through sheer incompetence.

-

Pakistan’s runs in each innings

Pakistan ended this series by being way, way better than at any other time. Their innings was set up by their young player Azan Awais, and the two old fellas Shan Masood and Babar Azam helped. Before their puppy dog quick went whack, thack, kaboom and bozoinks into the skies of Birmingham.

Had Pakistan actually pulled off this VVS Bob Willis attempt, it might have changed the narrative. But it is important to remember just how bad this team were for so long.

In this series, England’s tail (8-11) averaged more than Pakistan’s top seven. Josh Tongue could bat eight for the tourists and severely improve their lineup.

Coming into this final innings, he had scored as many boundaries as any Pakistani who was not named Saud Shakeel. And, in all honesty, he looked more settled than them. Sure, he had faced a flat military medium attack. But he is a number eleven who knows what he does best, and Pakistan’s top order looks like they are assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded in a hurricane.

One of Pakistan’s few hopes in this series was Babar Azam. Well, maybe hope is the wrong word, but if anyone was going to do it, and they probably were not, he was the most likely of the least likely. If that sentence makes little sense, so does Babar’s career.

He missed the first Test with an injury, then was outscored by Tongue right up until 3-0 was basically inevitable.

Babar and Shan Masood finally came good when people were etching 3-0 into the record.

This was one of the many reasons that Pakistan made no runs in their first innings. They were so bad, you could almost argue their first knocks were void. They were out of every game by the halfway point, and really, they barely got that far.

England’s opening pair averaged less than 15 runs together in this series. That is terribly low, and yet, Pakistan went at 3.33. At Lord’s, their opening was so bad they lost Imam-ul-Haq before batting.

So England’s biggest weakness didn’t matter.

Remember, this England side wasn’t exactly flying; they were one coach and captain down after the start of the summer. On the rankings, this should have been two evenly matched ordinary teams.

It would seem that England are ranked fifth, and Pakistan are closer to the 198th place their football team is ranked.

On this tour they brought out 23 players; 16 of them played. Some just got frequent flyer miles. England used 11.

England have two openers that they’re not sure about, and their fourth seamer really didn’t do much. But they understood they need to see more of Emilio Gay, Ben Duckett has been a star and Gus Atkinson bowled well despite the lack of wickets.

It is easier to be an adult when you are winning. But they could have panicked, made changes, and done weird things. Instead, Pakistan panicked enough for five teams.

Saim Ayub is one of those decisions. He clearly has talent and is worth watching going ahead. But he was picked partly because of his bowling, which seems more white ball than red.

As England needed 10 runs to win, he was bowling to Jordan Cox. Both are young players new to international cricket. But the English batter (and now keeper) seems to know his game very well. His play has a structure, and each action has a reason.

When Ayub delivered two balls on a good length around off stump, he defended them. They were good deliveries and had him prodding a little. But then the Pakistani part timer came around the wicket. He is a carrom ball bowler, so Ayub’s best delivery is over the wicket at off stump as he was bowling.

There is no reason for him to come around. It doesn’t follow at all. He cannot spin the ball around anyone’s legs; it’s an angle that can only help the batter. And then he bowled it two feet outside leg stump. It was perhaps the easiest run in Cox’s short international career.

At this point, it’s OK to think the match and series were over, so why does this even need mentioning?

Because it didn’t need to happen. He did it purely because he could, not because he should. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t stack up, it didn’t help. No process or cricket thinking was involved. That was their series.

On the last ball, Pakistan misfielded. On the first ball of the series they lost a wicket. That is how you lose a series.

And maybe their only chance of anything came early on day four of the last Test.

Again Mohammad Abbas was on fire. In the first over, he had the ball on a string, and England’s top order kept finding him impossible. All Pakistan needed was one bowler at the other end. They went with the predictably unpredictable pace of Razaullah. He got met, so Mohammad Ali bowled again.

The wicket had some low bounce, and his inseam wobble ball was on point. England stopped scoring and tried to survive. Then they moved the field around to give Joe Root a funky looking offside field with a catching cover point and a wide mid off.

The England captain took the bait and played a big ugly shot, right at the moment Ali got one to seam like an off spinner. It knocked out leg stump.

This is what Abbas needed, just one bowler at the other end, backing his play. But Root didn’t leave the crease, he waited for the umpires to check, and for the 16th time in this series (he would bowl another one later), Mohammad Ali overstepped the crease.

Mohammad Ali is good enough to bowl at mid 80s, nip the ball like an off-spinner, take the inside edge of a top-15 batter of all time, and knock his leg stump out of the fucken ground. He is also not good enough to avoid bowling terrible deliveries or to keep his feet behind the line.

Pakistan did not lose this match or series because of no balls. That was just a symptom of what everyone can see. They are not professional, and that is why they lose.

They are on the wrong side of the line all the time.

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***
History will remember Razaullah

by Rob Barron

A first innings deficit of 320 runs. One more chance to bat in a series of laughable ineptitude. Nine days of insipid, monotonous drudgery as Pakistan hurtled towards the foregone conclusion of 3-0 with none of the glimpses of magic or nonsense they always bring to the game. Of course it was the full carnage off the field, with nobody accepting responsibility for the disarray, probably because whoever was in charge had sacked themselves by accident.

One more chance then for the team to reach 200 for the first time on the tour, to leave these shores with some hope, or at least give their fans a type of entertainment that wasn’t embarrassing. So, with four balls gone in their innings it was 0/2. Pakistan gonna Pakistan. The ignominy of a day 2 finish was odds-on. They’d thrown in the towel, the bathmat, the flannels, and their dignity. At this point they were 1000-1 to win the match, and they were only 1000-1 because the bookies’ betting software doesn’t allow them to offer odds that are bigger than that. Boring.

Then Pakistan really started Pakistanning. Never, EVER think that Pakistan are going to go a whole series without doing the completely impossible. Making England bat again would’ve been a real achievement. Some of the old guard played like professional cricketers for a bit to set the platform for Abbas, whose Test-best 29 was scored seven years ago. Oh, and the kid would have a swing too. You know the rest but if any innings is worth revisiting, it’s Razaullah’s. Rewatching the nine sixes a load of times last night was like falling asleep on Homer Simpson’s dream bed and your brain replaying your favourite TV show ever.

The flay over deep square off Tongue was the bit in the Wire where Brother Mouzone faces off with Omar. The crash off Atkinson into the building site was Dwight Shrute giving Kevin a back massage in season 7 of the US Office. The brutal belter over long on a couple of balls later? Only Fools and Horses, A Losing Streak. Next ball, the beautifully ugly smear into the middle of next week? The episode of ER where Mark Green dies. Fuck me that’s stayed with me.

The ball from Archer he pulverised over long-off was that episode of Better Call Saul where Jimmy has to go and pick up Lalo’s bail money in the desert. The ball after, which killed about eight birds on its way to Kidderminster- The Office, Training. The kitchen-sinker 12 balls later? Cheers- Pick a Con... Any Con. The baby six off Atkinson? The Simpsons- Homer the Heretic. Then the last one. The marauding, bloodthirsty bushwhack off Dan Lawrence. Quite possibly the best thing anyone’s ever put on TV. Breaking Bad- Dead Freight.

On to today then, with Pakistan 50/1 to defend 130. They had to be the good Pakistan. Actually, they had to be perfect. Abbas’s first over was. He nailed Duckett first ball and got rid of Gay with his sixth. Game on. It’s not hyperbolic to suggest if Pakistan got it done from where they were it would rank as the greatest heist in the history of Test match cricket. Then the wheels completely came off, because people started thinking they could do it, and because Pakistan. The fielders went through the full comedy showcase. Misfields everywhere. Overthrows. Ali bowled Root, but off Pakistan’s thirty sixth no ball of the series. There was a five wides. There was a five no balls. From two down in their last batting innings of the tour, Pakistan became the best versions of themselves and made a game of it. From two down in their last bowling innings, they went back to what they’ve done best this summer- the full nonsense.

England win the series 3-0 then, but nobody will remember that. History will remember Razaullah’s razing, rambunctious rampage, and it was better than any TV you’ll ever see.

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by Behram Qazi

Pakistan’s day at Edgbaston today.

That’s a phrase we haven’t used throughout all ten completed days of cricket in this series. Perhaps after Day 1 at Lord’s, but very hesitantly.

Pakistan managed to score 449 runs in the third innings, which is their highest second innings total against England in Tests, ever. The visiting side had not breached the 200 mark in five attempts, and out of absolutely nowhere they nearly scored 450.

We never imagined there to be a Day 4 of this Test, or even a fourth innings, really. And yet, here we are, with England requiring 130 runs to sweep Pakistan at home.

Shan Masood scored a streaky 95, dropped twice before he got to his fifty. Babar Azam looked good to end his near four year hundred drought in Tests, but fell short by 24 runs, bounced out yet again. Azan Awais scored a compact and attractive 59 at the top of the order as well. None of these batting efforts came close to what the Edgbaston spectators witnessed in the last couple of hours.

A 121 run partnership for the ninth wicket between Mohammad Abbas the veteran, and Razaullah, the swashbuckling debutant took the cake.

Pakistan were two down for nought in the third innings, and then eight down for 318 later on Day 3, still trailing by two runs. An innings defeat was still on the cards, before Razaullah went full Happy Gilmore on England.

He swung for the hills, smashing nine sixes in total. Before this knock, Jofra Archer had hit four maximums in the series, the most by a single batter. Razaullah has now walloped one more six than all of England’s batters, combined.

A 43 ball half-century on Test debut, and 81 off 63 by the time he was stumped, the 21 year old equalled Corbin Bosch’s record of most runs by a number nine batter on Test debut.

Clearing his front leg, Razaullah brought out both baseball and golf swings, as the ball sailed over the fence. At times he aimed for midwicket, and the ball cleared the rope over extra cover.

He even brought out the back foot punch once, and had the ability to defend the ball off the front foot against spin. His ninth and last six came off Dan Lawrence where he used his feet.

Razaullah brought three bats to England, and broke two of them during this innings. He decimated two balls into the stand at Edgbaston which is under construction. Mohammad Abbas partnered the rookie exceptionally well, chancing his arm on occasion and amassing 42 runs of his own. The veteran has never scored more runs in a first class innings.

England will chase down 130 runs on a pitch that continues to flatten out, but for the first time in this series, fans got their money’s worth.

It was Pakistan’s day at Edgbaston, but in truth, it was Razaullah’s week, month, and potentially year.

***

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by Rob Barron

Certain shortsighted and foolish individuals wrote Pakistan off as non-triers, wrote scathing pieces and made preposterous comments like ‘the side should’ve been escorted from the field to put everyone out of their misery’, that ‘3-0 flattered Pakistan’ and such like. Some, let’s say some with 25 years’ experience of betting on and setting cricket odds, even packed all their bags and told their wives they’d be home tonight as there was zero chance that Pakistan would live to fight another day. If you find any such person, punch him in the kidneys from me.

Pakistan’s runline was 215.5 overnight, meaning there was about a 50% chance that they’d score fewer than 215 runs in their last innings. Feels like we were talking along similar lines yesterday when the tourists were waiting for England to do the decent thing and finish them off quickly so we could all put this hammering behind us and get on with our lives.

Having been 0/2 and not managed to get 200 on the board in five consecutive innings on the tour, the Pakistan corpse twitched a little last night as Shan Masood and Azan Awais saw Pakistan to stumps with a bit of help from the rain and Ben Duckett’s buttery crisp packet hands. This morning the corpse got up and started doing a merry jig. In the evening the corpse had fully regenerated into some kind of impossible comedy Terminator. Think of Pakistan as Tyson Fury and England as Deontay Wilder doing that stupid dance to the crowd.

Early on it was chanceless accumulation, smart running and various other impossible Pakistan cricket until, of course, Dan Lawrence came on and got rid of Azan to ensure his series bowling economy and average were both, obviously, zero. Pakistan cunningly put Ben Duckett’s hands on Theo Wylie, the man whose one and only job is to field acceptably, and he clanged an insultingly easy chance into the Edgbaston turf to give Masood another reprieve on 40.

Neil Manthorp on talkSPORT told us Wylie gets £350 a day to be a sub fielder. Presumably after this, the ECB will implement performance-related pay for the role because he didn’t deserve £3.50 for his efforts today. What if he was a secret agent, sent on to ensure Day 4 happens to swell the ECB coffers?

The thing with Pakistan is, whenever you are absolutely sure that they are going to do something, they will do the exact opposite. In this case, there have been nine days of conclusive evidence that Pakistan were going to go down without any kind of a fight. Babar hadn’t scored 10 yet, nobody from either side had scored a hundred, Robinson was taking a wicket every five minutes, and Archer and Tongue were doing the rest. So of course, Masood and Babar stitched together a serene partnership with Masood in total control as he moved inexorably to 95. Who better to be bowling than Gus Atkinson when you’re five away from the series’ first ton? He’d taken one wicket in 330 balls so far across the three Tests.

There was a wake-up call for Masood as Atkinson flirted with his edge, just stopping short of kissing it. If you thought Masood would then knuckle down for the century, you’ve never seen Pakistan play cricket. He nicked off the next ball, Lawrence taking a blinder low to his right. Of course he did. What do you reckon Josh Tongue’s figures were at that point? You know, the only guy who has more wickets than Mitchell Starc in this cycle of the World Test Championship? That’s right, he was 0/60 from nine overs. Of course he was.

Babar picked up where Shan left off and, with Shakeel for company, took over the corpse for a bit and carried on the merry jig, until he got to 69 and lost his mind. Our man Wylie had been moved to the third man boundary where he couldn’t possibly do any more harm. Of course, Babar then hoofed one straight to where Wylie should’ve been standing- but he was three yards in - so he backpedaled, caught the ball and stood on the rope at the same time, relayed it to himself and dropped it. Six runs. A few balls later Babar escorted a harmless leg side pie into the gloves of Jordan Cox, who took the catch nicely. Cricket.

At tea, Pakistan looked a certainty to bring us all back for a Day 4 that was, at 0/2 yesterday afternoon, about as likely as Ravi Shastri being the next Pakistan coach and staying in the job for 25 years. When Abbas walked out at number 10 with Pakistan still behind and about two hours left in the day, I remembered I’d backed the match to finish on Day 3 at 7/2 and in the evening session of Day 3 at 10/1. So, what followed was entirely and completely predictable.

After this evening’s miracle Razaullah, the 21-year-old debutant number nine who bowls 90mph, and who got rid of Joe Root in his first over of Test cricket, has hit more sixes than the entire England squad put together. Nine of the beautiful, belligerent bastards.

Razaullah was belting it everywhere. His brutally mesmerising 81 was the best, most entertaining innings of the entire series. Abbas was the perfect straight man in this divine comedy. Razaullah’s bat looked like Simon Pegg’s in Shaun of the Dead as he collected more cherries than an ‘80s fruit machine. Pakistan were 318/8 when these two heroes came together. They put on 121 runs for the ninth wicket. Abbas flicked between prime Babar and a drunk canoeist with a paddle made out of sausages and Razaullah turned into 1981 Ian Botham with a bat made out of fire and magic.

England forgot where the stumps were. Tongue forgot to change the bag on his tail hoover, having filled it up so much earlier in the series. You could’ve had as much as you wanted on Pakistan to win this game at 1000/1 a couple of days back. They were backing 20/1 at one point this evening.

So, what have we learnt? Pakistan are the least predictable team in any sport ever, England aren’t as good as they think they are, cricket is mental and I’m an idiot. In other words, absolutely nothing. See you tomorrow.

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans.

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Busted fingers have been a bit of a theme in this Test series.

Shan Masood started the series with a fractured finger after copping a nasty blow in the Caribbean. Apart from the many fumbles he has made in the field, it has also cost him runs. Across 50 Tests, Shan has averaged in and around 30 with the bat. It might change on Day 3 at Edgbaston, but as things stand, he has not scored 30 runs in an innings on this tour. Shan was also dropped on 13 by Ben Duckett, which means he might just complete his version of thirteen going on thirty, with Jennifer Garner nowhere to be seen.

Babar Azam missed the Headingley Test due to a finger injury as well. No broken bones, just a ball that rose sharply off the deck in Beckenham. He mentioned in a press conference prior to the Lord’s Test that he was 90 percent fit. Babar hasn’t managed to get to double digits across three innings thus far, so that last 10 percent has well and truly held him back. Perhaps he could have scored more runs than Gus Atkinson with a fully functioning finger.

Mohammad Rizwan also hurt his fingers plenty of times at Lord’s, keeping up to the stumps. He is currently looking for a shrink back in Pakistan, after being flown back prematurely.

Jamie Smith joined Pakistan’s former and current captains with what has been described as his finger being in a splint. He was deemed unfit to keep wicket, but fit enough to smash Pakistan’s bowlers for a counterattacking knock of 69. Jamie’s stiff, bruised, or potentially dislocated finger has proven to be stronger than Imam-ul-Haq’s calf.

Busted fingers may well have been a theme in this series, but only one team has truly felt the pain.

- by Behram Qazi

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England’s runline was 329.5 overnight, meaning there was about a 50% chance that they’d score fewer than 330 runs in their first innings. At 156/4, with Pakistan’s random team generator machine of utter and complete nonsense fighting to salvage something - anything - from a series which has seen them lurch from chaos to omnishambles, there should’ve been a rallying cry this morning. Razaullah firing 90mph bombs from one end with Abbas’ metronomic meddling at the other. Get rid of Lawrence early, let Brook get himself out in his 55-75 danger zone, give the fans something to cheer about. At least tell the fielders that their fans had paid an average of £100 for a ticket to watch them today, and suggest they look like they were trying to stop the ball, run after it and so on. They conceded 52 in the first six overs. Fifty two. England should’ve declared there and then and they could’ve booked a teatime tee-time for their post-series pub golf.

Shakeel aside, Pakistan haven’t really fought on this tour and my word they didn’t really fight today. They did manage to get the sixth wicket they needed to bowl England out on the stroke of tea, but by then England had added 297 runs in 50 overs. 453 all out. England have only had to bat four times across the three Test Matches. England’s 8-11 have averaged 24; Pakistan’s 1-7 have averaged sixteen. Josh Tongue, the number 11 who boasted a Test batting average of FOUR POINT EIGHT SIX before Pakistan came to town, hit his eleventh four of the series this afternoon. At that point, only Saud Shakeel, from all the Pakistan players, had hit more. Than JOSH TONGUE. England’s number 10 had hit more sixes than all sixteen of the opposition players put together.

We’ve seen sides in disarray, in bad form, with off-field dramas, carrying injuries, struck down with Covid and not bothering to turn up in dead rubbers. In my 25 years of covering cricket, I can’t remember seeing a team who has tried less hard to win a Test. Being outplayed is fine. It not being the players’ fault is a completely fair argument. The board, the management, the selectors and everyone involved with this clusterfuck of a tour don’t just have blood on their hands, they look like a DMX album cover. Nevertheless, eleven men were picked to play for their country in this match, three of whom for the first time. They didn’t try hard enough. The only acceptable tactic this game has been the batters all aiming at Ben Duckett, whose catching has made Mr Magoo look like a peregrine falcon.

This was more boxed kittens than cornered tigers. The fielding went from lamentable to pathetic to deplorable. Masood’s game-within-a-game was seeing how many times he could field the ball before he picked it up cleanly. Zero intensity, hands in pockets or on hips. The players can’t wash their hands of this, no matter how impossibly poorly they’ve been managed. A reminder that before this series England weren’t a very good cricket team, having orchestrated their own drunken circus whilst throwing away their previous series against an injury-stricken New Zealand.

At 4.05pm this afternoon, they announced an ominous-sounding CODE RED in the press box. All stewards were to report immediately. At exactly that moment, Robinson took England’s second wicket. The innings had been going for 5 balls. Half of us were expecting the stewards to eject Pakistan from the ground for wasting everyone’s time. Instead, thanks to some crease occupation from Azan and Masood, we’ll be back tomorrow. They did show a bit of fight, in the same way a discombobulated fighter’s fists flail through muscle memory alone as he descends to the canvas. 3-0 it will be, and it’s a scoreline which flatters Pakistan.

- by Rob Barron

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The ball is possessed. It should, by all rights, be at square leg, or maybe back down the pitch. At worst, heading off towards legside safely. But instead it floats, unnaturally, towards wide mid-on.

The laws of nature cannot explain it. The laws of man would not allow it. The laws of cricket consent to it.

And so another Pakistani batter is out, in the ugliest, weirdest and most horrific way possible.

There is still nearly two hours until lunch, and it will only get worse.

***

There is an old man crying right now; he doesn’t know why. Tears run down his cheek; his copy of the newspaper is stained. His grief sticks him to his ergonomically designed rocking chair.

The reason for his pain is that Test cricket has changed. And it terrifies him.

This old man knows the game, has lived it all his life, and this mutant hybrid sharktopus in front of him is not his sport. It has changed, and every single moment of the first session at Edgbaston reminds him of this.

The first ball of the day moves violently down the onside, so it was four leg byes. Technically, this is a win for the batting team. But really, it is a jump scare.

This is a delivery that was pitched a mile outside off stump; how has it ended up outside leg? It isn’t often you see a terrifying four leg byes, but this is one.

There is a trope in horror movies of the comically unaware being murdered early because they have not read the news. Saim Ayub played a bunch of on-the-up drives in a way that suggests he has not seen a Test match since January 2025 because he’s been watching The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on loop. Dude, look behind you, there is a grim reaper with a giant scythe who has been taking the souls of every single batter. Why on earth are you loosely driving at balls?

There is always one character who does the worst thing possible in every situation. Shan Masood’s shot was like running into the woods at midnight barefoot and basically naked bleeding from every orifice and hoping you outrun werewolves. On a wicket with up-and-down bounce, he played a half-hearted chip pull.

This is the face of a man who knows he did something very wrong.

Babar Azam was bowled. When he walked off, he gestured that the ball kept low; it did, it also came back in violently. But at a certain point, when it comes to Babar’s career, the call is coming from inside the house, and he is making the call. He is the killer, and the victim.

So at this point, Pakistan had been the prey, but of course, you need one person who doesn’t get stabbed or eaten. And again, that is Saud Shakeel.

There is always a moment when it feels like it should go wrong for him. He is not cautious; he doesn’t do the sensible things. He stands in his crease and wafts his bat around. And so it feels like he should be a victim.

But he also hit a lot of fours, with this exact method. Concrete feet, artist’s hands, and a perfect offside shot.

The ball runs away to the rope like it was predestined. You have to suspend your belief a little to trust that he can keep pumping offside boundaries while his team can’t even defend a ball. But it works. While his teammates play as if their bats were replaced by a magic spell that turns their willow into their aunties’ spines, he has some kind of alien blade that can only blast through the offside.

But he was not the only one to make runs. Pakistan chose Razaullah, a 21-year-old puppy dog fast bowler, who batted like he was unaware he was at a Test match. So a bowler and an offside stylist was why Pakistan made 100 runs. They were the only two players to make it to double figures by the break.

But Razaullah was Pakistan’s third top-scorer, because of leg byes. England allowed 14 of them as they chased LBWs and bowleds like they were reverse swinging the ball to the tail. Modern bowling is just lateral movement and constant appeals. Jofra Archer went up when the ball went down for four. Luckily the innings are so short, otherwise the bowlers would hurt their arms from raising them so often.

But the real shock here is not that Pakistan can’t bat, or that Ollie Robinson is dicing them up with rusty razorblades. It’s that they still scored 100 runs in the session.

That was the third time in history that a normal first session of a Test had 100 runs and seven wickets. Those are two pretty big extremes. It is not easy to lose that many straight up, and if you do, the idea of 100 runs with that many wickets is insane.

This didn’t even feel like an outlier. It felt like modern normal cricket. A team lost lots of wickets, they scored quick while doing it.

And somewhere, an old man cried. Not from the horror, but the grief of losing something. Pakistan never looked to shut up shop, England bowled algorithmic preformulated plans, there were heaps of wickets and heaps of runs. It felt like a highlights package more than a Test.

Well, some were lowlights. The comedy death had to be Azan Awais.

He got a delivery back of the length, he tried to push it around the corner, and he was caught at mid-on. This had happened in cricket for hundreds of years without this kind of dismissal. It wasn’t even one thing. Try getting out this way with a toothpick bat, or on old pitches without this kind of bounce. No, this was something that could only happen now.

Tests have been mutilated beyond belief by the modern era. Like someone dunked them in radioactive acid. They’re part T20, a little ODI, and barely any Test has survived.

What happened, WHAT FUCKEN HAPPENED, you scream into your woolen sweater, while Pakistan make 100 runs and lose seven wickets in a session that feels totally normal now.

Test cricket is possessed.

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Take a look at these seven names: Abdullah Fazal, T20 batting strike rate of 153. Saim Ayub, who has played a few Test matches and has a high score of 77. Arafat Minhas, an allrounder who bowls a little bit of spin, and whose bowling average in international cricket currently is 13.45. Saad Baig, a 19-year-old batter. Razaullah, a bowler who has played 24 games of professional cricket.

And then two men who are both called Mohammad Imran.

If you’ve followed cricket headlines, you know where this is going. These are the seven players the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) have decided to fly in to replace five others before their third Test against England.

The way I think about this is, Pakistan were desperate to get Mohammad Imran, but they couldn’t remember which one. So they figured, “Let’s just take both to England, and we’ll work it out when we get there.”

Pakistan are already 2-0 down against England, and they believe a wholesale change like this can alter their fortunes.

The only important thing to note here is that I have absolutely faked the photos above. I just picked random images because I assumed that you, like most cricket fans, have no idea who most of these potential new saviours are.

It’s because Pakistan are just clutching at straws. This mass sacking and picking is one of the least professional things we have ever seen a modern cricket team do. This is even unprofessional by Pakistan’s standards.

In fact, let’s take it a step further. If you’re bringing out your Unremarkable Seven, or whatever they’re calling this, you’re not only doing that. Because Pakistan are sending home five more players, including Mohammad Rizwan.

And it doesn’t stop there, because of course, they’re also sending home a bowling coach and a head coach. Which means you also need to bring in a new bowling coach and head coach.

So that means in the eight-nine days between the second and the third Test, we are going to see 16 people involved with Pakistan cricket – professionals doing their job – change places. Nine flying in (seven players and two coaches) and seven flying out (five players and two coaches). That is bigger than the average squad size.

When you factor in that it is 2026, this has to be one of the most staggering and unexplainable moments you will ever see in cricket.

****

We can give a pretty thorough retelling of Pakistan’s modern Test history through this. If you go back before then, they had some success at times in the 1950s and ‘60s and even ‘70s, but it’s really the 1980s when they become the fully fledged team that we know today.

In 1980 with an incredible allrounder and Javed Miandad’s moustache, they are ranked fifth in the world. In 1981, that goes up to No.4, and in 1982, that goes drops to No.6. At this stage, no one’s expecting that this is about to become a powerhouse of cricket.

But then to finish off the 1980s, they are ranked second in the world and then third. And remember, being ranked second in the world in the 1980s is a whole different kind of universe because you have the West Indies at their peak that point. And Pakistan were really good against West Indies. In fact, the two best sides of that era were the West Indies and New Zealand, and Pakistan played very good cricket against both of them.

They were a brilliant team who would’ve been the best in the world had not the greatest team of all time also played at the exact same period.

Then, the 1990s start, and even though Imran Khan will retire in this period, they remain the second-best team in the world. That moves on to the third-best, partly because South Africa come along and they are fantastic from the beginning.

They have one year where they slip back to No.4, but they are pretty consistent all the way from the early ‘80s to the late ‘90s. They are fantastic. Their bowling is ridiculous.

There’s lots of really talented players coming through, and an absolute ton of all-rounders. Javed Miandad’s moustache is taken over by Inzamam-ul-Haq’s surprisingly fast feet. There’s just a ton of talent in Pakistan cricket right up until the new millennium.

But as Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis start to age out and Shoaib Akhtar doesn’t play that many games – and their allrounders are good, but they need to supplement better bowlers that they can’t find anymore – it gets, well, a lot rougher

And then they have a huge period where they’re ranked sixth every year, like they’re almost stuck there and they can’t move. It is of course during this period that they lose a Test captain to fixing as well. They’re a very inconsistent team, except for the fact that they are consistent in being fairly ordinary.

But then they improve a little bit. Yes, they have one year where they’re sixth, but you can see now they regularly rank fourth. And remember, there’s more teams playing Test cricket. It’s a little bit more competitive than it was in some of the other eras.

Being the fourth-best team three times out of four is actually not that bad, all things considered. So there’s something to work with in that 2010s period. And we know that because they end up being the world’s number one ranked side too.

It was an excellent effort from a well-drilled team who couldn’t play at home because of what happened with the terrorism, who had lost a captain to a fixing ban, and yet somehow they ended up – for the first time in their history – as the No.1 ranked team in the world. This was a huge deal for Pakistan cricket.

But what happened straight after that? They went all the way back to No.6 again, as if the peak was a mistake, as if it never actually happened. They go back to their rightful place, back end of the middle of the pack.

And after that, they actually get worse. They’re ranked seventh in the world for a little while before coming back to that number six position. And they were NO.7 last year. At the moment, the Pakistan men’s Test cricket team is ranked eighth in the ICC rankings.

There’s something else that their history shows. When they were great in the 1980s through to the 1990s, it was a period before cricket was truly professional.

Most players around the world would’ve been amateurs who would have had second jobs, or wouldn’t have been paid enough to make cricket their main income source.

If they did get paid, it was usually fairly small amounts. So this is largely an amateur era. By the ‘90s, things do start to change. Australian cricket gets a lot more professional. You would probably put South Africa there as well.

From 2000 to 2010, I would say is probably the first international professional level of cricket we have ever had. From 2010 to 2020, it is very similar.

That No.1 ranking that they had, that was probably the most professional team that Pakistan has ever had. The preparation they had before the England tour in 2016, for example, was absolutely extraordinary.

And in the last couple of years, we have seen a boom in thinking, planning, money, and professionalism, around cricket. And during that time, Pakistan have got consistently worse.

They may not end up at eighth in Tests at the end of the year, but spiritually, they feel like they should be there. So, as money has come into cricket, Pakistan have got worse.

This is not an accident. This is a clear pattern of what happens when you don’t keep up with the sport. The Misbah-ul-Haq era was the one time they finally got their act together, and they ended up doing well. But again, that’s a one-off. I won’t call it a fluke because they definitely earned it.

But it is a moment that is all on its own. It doesn’t even have other years around it. They just went on a really good run. They thought about their cricket a lot. They got the trophy that they deserved. But outside of that, there’s nothing else.

Are we really saying that over this period of time, that Pakistan don’t create the same level of cricketers that they did in the 1980s, when they were mostly picking from the same schools over and over again, and people who spoke English a lot?

It’s impossible to believe that since the year 2000, they haven’t actually had more players available to them. And yet somehow, even with the talent that we see occasionally creep through their system, they’ve been so much worse than they used to be in Test cricket. And it’s not just Test cricket.

In 1992, they win the ODI World Cup.

And for the T20 World Cup, they were still good enough to win one of the early editions and being at the business end of the tournament in others. But, you’d have to say that T20 was played in a much more amateur way than it is now.

You also have the Champions Trophy in 2017, in which they started about as badly as you can as a team and ended very, very well in the final. So it isn’t as if this era is completely devoid of any success, but what it is lacking is professionalism, consistency, and getting the most out of your players.

Cricket has slowly been dragged into being a more well-run sport, and Pakistan seem to be getting, if anything, maybe even worse than where they used to be.

The PCB could not have less of an idea on how to run modern-day sports teams. They are completely bereft of ideas, and they make changes all the time. Nothing ever makes sense. No players ever feel safe. No coaches ever feel safe. And they’ve just made 16 changes in the middle of a Test series that they have already lost.

This is an organisation that has been running cricket for a long time, and they seemingly have learnt very little. After going 2-0 down against England, they have made 16 changes.

How is that professional? How is that smart? How is that helping Pakistan cricket in any way? It’s just more panic and chaos when there should be plans and systems and thoughts in place.

Cricket has a very long history of what we would call ‘tours of hell’, where teams go away for a huge amount of time to some far-flung place, and just everything falls apart. Pakistan are not the first team to go on tour to somewhere like England and for it just not to work out for them.

But how you deal with crises is just as important as how you got there in the first place. Yes, the selection was a bit poor and uninspired, and the team really hasn’t made much sense on paper and has played slightly worse on the field.

But when it comes down to this, how can you see this as a failure of the 12 men on the field, or the selectors, or the coaches who are involved with this when there is a very, very long history of Pakistan cricket being well behind the times?

Yes, this current Pakistan team is bad, but the PCB have had 25 years to fix this nonsense, and instead the best they could do after all of this chaos and losses is to move 16 people around in one of the stupidest moves we have ever seen in professional cricket.

Dan Lawrence was shuffling outside offstump, thrusting his hip at the ball, trying to play weirdly defensive shots to Mohammad Ali. He missed them all. Then he moved away from the stumps, gave himself some room and tried to hit over extra cover. Instead, he sliced it to backward point for a boundary. Next delivery, he played the same shot, but with a stiller head and straighter blade, and the ball ended up in the crowd over cover.

England were not in trouble at this point, but Lawrence was. So he went into the Bazball bag of bashing, and found a way to change the game. If Pakistan were about to roll him and England, Lawrence basically ended their chance, and went on to make another half-century (he must be sick of them now - he’s got six without hitting a century) on a difficult pitch.

Not everyone likes this style, but this is how it should be used. A nick is coming, the ball is keeping low for LBW, you need to do something to upset the game plan.

Dan Lawrence is a fringe player, yet he can change moments of games so quickly.

Compare that to Mohammad Rizwan’s new obsession: the slog sweep when he comes to the crease. It changes the game quickly, but towards the bowling team.

It was a disgusting attempt at disruption.

****

Pakistan have used 12 players in this series so far. Which is remarkable, as they came third at Headingley in a contest of two teams. If Babar Azam was fit, they may have been unchanged.

Imam-ul-Haq is a 30-year-old who doesn’t average 30 when he travels, and doesn’t score quick. On top of that, he will forever be known for this ghost calf injury scandal. He’s unlikley to shake up many games, if he gets picked again.

Azan Awais shapes up well, is compact and disciplined, and he can play a lovely whip over midwicket. But he’s never been asked to play T20, and rarely even gets a go in List A cricket. He is one of the most orthodox young players in the game.

Shan Masood has changed his cricket so many times it is hard to remember what his current version is. He did have a couple of years where he played aggressively, but has started to slow down again. But even when upping the tempo, he’s fairly consistent with his play. He takes clever, simple chances. It isn’t game-changing, even when scoring fast.

Salman Ali Agha is in a similar position. He can score quickly, but it’s fairly normy behaviour.

Abdullah Shafique and Saud Shakeel are cut from the same cloth too: both can score, but there is nothing transformative about them. Shafique batted well at Leeds, but it was playing normal shots at the right moment.

Shakeel should have got a hundred in the final innings at Lord’s at a decent clip, but it wasn’t counter-attacking. It was just that England bowled short and he kept pulling and hooking. There was a lovely cover drive on one knee, and some smart play in difficult cirmtsances. But it was what you expect a traditional player to try. This time, unlike all the other moments for Pakistan, it worked. Mostly their normal batting has faltered.

In a world of Rishabh Pant, Travis Head and Glenn Phillips, the Pakistan team bat normy.

Pakistan are not a slow-scoring team, but they’re also not fast over the last two years. While this tells us something, in a world filled with the Scott Boland/Ollie Robinson/Mohammad Abbas type of bowlers, they don’t do anything to upset the bowler’s rhythm. They are trying to beat the best bowlers in the world with conventional techniques, and that seems almost impossible now thanks to wobbelaball, DRS and friendly surfaces.

They need a disrupting tactic. But at the moment, they stand there looking afraid until their innings are over.

Usually Pakistan would bat out of their crease, but Tom Blundell has inspired a revolution by coming up to the stumps. So against Robinson, Pakistan’s choice was to hope he gets tired. Which is hard to do when their innings never even teases getting to the second new ball. They are just trapped on the crease, waiting for another nick or LBW.

Jamie Smith up at the stumps has been good, but he doesn’t really have to be. He could just stand there eating a sandwich and checking the racing results. His job is to stop Pakistan using the crease. With their batting being so orthodox in every other way, they are just waiting for Robinson to dismiss them.

This kind of bowler is a revolution in our game. And Pakistan are so obsessed, they also chose three of those kinds of new-fashioned wobble-ball medium-fast bowlers. It is not Pakistan’s fault that Ali and Khurram Shahzad bowled arse in the first Test. But when they bowled well in the second, with Abbas in even better form, they still had the issue that they picked the same type of bowler three times.

Josh Tongue could lean on his front foot without any worry, as he was facing 124-135kph bowling. England put on 68 runs for the last two wickets. There was no point of difference they could use, because it was just three seamers of similar pace and style. So once in, the tail felt really comfortable.

Abbas can obviously change a game. Ali and Shahzad also could, on certain days. But their attack has no height, no pace, and the same arm. There is no flat-pitch specialist, and even their left-arm finger spin from Ali Usman is a very normal orthodox choice.

Once a game goes in one direction, there seems to be no one from their team – with bat or ball – who can change it.

They are a sepia-toned team in a rainbow era.

Not that all of them haven’t tried. Today Rizwan tried to disrupt.

OK, so, umm, how do I put this - if your outlier batter is someone who bats so slow in T20 that it seems like he is unaware what format he’s in, it’s probably not the guy who shakes things up.

On top of that, Rizwan is obsessed with playing the slog sweep to fast bowlers. Often to the worst options: Jasprit Bumrah in T20Is, Robinson in Tests. And I am not sure he is good at the shot.

But even then, the attempt at Lord’s on an up-and-down surface was about as bad as it gets. He was lucky to only be dismissed from a very groiny LBW.

If he’d tried the ramp, or to flat-bat down the ground, you could understand it. Or, if like Lawrence, he found a gap and shot combo that could upset the bowler, it would make sense. But Pakistan either played straight, batted orthodox until getting out, or Rizwan slogged hard and was trapped nuts before wicket.

England remain undisrupted; Pakistan remain disgusted.

Dan Lawrence takes centre stage

by Behram Qazi

Jonathan Norman on talkSPORT commentary called Dan Lawrence one of the most watchable players in world cricket.

He was not talking about his frog-in-a-blender bowling action either.

It was a soggy affair at Lords on Day 3 of a dead Test match. England’s eventual lead at stumps was 357 runs, and the way Pakistan have batted this series, they might not get close to that score even if they were awarded a third dig.

Norman is a Surrey fan. Lawrence is a Surrey player. Some bias might have been at play, but if you tuned into the limited action sandwiched between all the rain, you would not have disagreed with him, entirely.

The Lord’s pitch has been a hot topic in recent times. Diabolical for batting, and a demerit point in the kitty from earlier this summer.

The first two days yielded no such discussion, but uneven bounce on a damp Day 3 meant that it might be all the rage again.

Emilio Gay was trapped LBW by a Mohammad Abbas nip-backer that kissed the floor. Later, our man Lawrence was hit in the rib cage by not the kind of Mohammad Ali who used to do that for a living.

The floodlights were on, the clouds were clouding, and batting was incredibly difficult.

That did not phase Lawrence though. He might have lost a rib, and got hit in the box as well, but still walked back unbeaten on 50 from 66 deliveries.

The first runs he scored were over the slip cordon off Abbas, as a result of charging at him. Rizwan, who might not have fingers left on either hand by the end of the series, came up to the stumps next ball.

Lawrence chose to defend against Abbas, but looked like Martin Lawrence batting when he tried.

He picked his battles wisely, taking on Khurram Shahzad, scoring three fours off his bowling in quick succession.

Against Ali, who had shattered his ribs a few balls earlier, he used his feet again.

The penultimate delivery of the over was carved above the gully fielder for four. Not in a sexy, aesthetically pleasing way though. You would not see anything like it on the Thanksgiving episode of an American sitcom.

The ball after, however, was the shot of the Test. A skip down the track, red cherry met with the full face of the blade, bludgeoned up and over the covers for a gigantic six.

On any other day his methods were questionable. On a Lord’s surface with inconsistent bounce, his tactics were spot on.

He walloped Ali Usman later to reach his second half century in three innings since his comeback. Upset spectators, who had spent 150 quid on their ticket, losing half of them because 15-plus overs were bowled, had something to cheer about.

Jonathan Norman had something to cheer about.

Dan Lawrence is not the most watchable player in world cricket, but on a rain hit day at Lords, he probably was.

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Pakistan’s much-needed boot camp

by Rob Barron

There was an incredible woman on the tube this morning. She was wearing a massive black woolly cardigan and her face was redder than the beetroot sandwiches they knocked up in the press box at Lord’s during the middle session. There wasn’t any heat for her to have been struggling with but the reason for the redness became apparent very quickly as she got into her routine. And what a routine it was.

Off came the cardigan and she did chin-ups on the hand rail until we got to Earl’s Court. The tube was packed. Then she hung from the bar until we stopped at Gloucester Road. When the train pulled in to South Kensington our heroine got the cardigan, wiped her face with it, put it back on and sat down, profusely apologising to everyone as she did so. Then she did it again.

Next stop- off came the cardigan, chin-ups all the way to Victoria, hanging to St James’s Park, cardigan on to Westminster. As I was getting off, the chin-ups were starting again. Legend. Miss-Bar-Ul-Haq.

Alright, it was press-ups for Misbah, at this ground 10 years ago. He’d made a promise to the ‘army guys’ who took Pakistan’s pre-tour boot camp that he’d bring out the press-ups if he scored a century, which he duly did as a Pakistan side full of substance and style beat England by 75 runs at the London Spirit Stadium.

Maybe Pakistan could do with a boot camp before Edgbaston next week. They could certainly do with some substance, or any style. With the conditions favourable for the bits of cricket we did have, Pakistan got some wickets, but it’s the kind of wickets which have no bearing on the result. Dan Lawrence played beautifully. It’s up to the weather whether England win in four days or five.

Unless we see something more surprising than a woman in a massive woolly cardigan doing chin-ups on the tube.

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