by Jarrod Kimber
Cover drives are overrated.
They’re pretty, I get it. The flow is nice, and they paint well. But it’s not that hard a shot to master. If you make it to international cricket as a batter, and often even the bowlers, you can play that shot. It is because the ball is kind of served up for it.
The hard shot is the on-drive.
Part of the reason is your pad; it is big and in the way. It means the bat path is really straight, and so the ball for the on-drive is dragged to midwicket, or square leg. That can be pretty, like a flick of the wrists. Or ugly, like a drag across the line.
But for Abdullah Shafique, the on-drive is as easy as breathing, or telling if it is raining by standing outside. Water is wet, Shafique on drives.
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Most players are likelier to be dismissed from the outside edge. That is what all the slips are for. It is why the ball moving away is the most dangerous.
But that is not how every player goes about their work. Shafique is someone who plays on the outside of the ball.
This is the first delivery that he faced, on Day 1 of the first Test between England and Pakistan. The ball went to square leg for a single. But you can see that his head is slightly outside the blade. This is where he is most comfortable.
This is not long after, and he’s still just outside the blade, forcing it to leg.
Other than balls that were well wide of the stumps, his head was almost always on the outside of the ball. And it isn’t him falling over, this is him with balance. He often has that and is in control, but the ball squeezes off the inside part of the bat anyway.
But most of these are defensive shots, or pushes.
The more fun ones are the proper on-drives. This is usually a sign that someone has technical mastery, but in Shafique’s case, it’s far more interesting.
His front leg is not out of the way for his on drives in a way you would see for Sachin Tendulkar or Virat Kohli. Instead, it’s on offstump. But his hands and head are out the way. So he is on-driving balls that others would hit straight.
And he does all this, with his head almost behind his gloves. It is like he’s playing peekaboo, but with on-drives.
So he’s manufacturing on-drives. And then, because of his head position, he kind of runs down the pitch with hands in front of his face.
Peekaboo, I on-drive you.
It’s not even just one type of on-drive he has. Mostly, he plays what would be straight drives for anyone else between the mid-on fielder and the umpire. But then, when his head drops, he can flick it wider. That means that setting a field to him when you’re bowling straight and full is an issue.
In his innings on Day 1 at Headingley, he struck eight fours, and half of them were that shot.
It is not a very common boundary option in Tests. To do it that often is wild.
This should be a very good sign, but it is also an issue.
He is very prone, far more than other top-order players, to be out LBW and bowled. He is taking away his chance of an outside edge, but bringing in the occasional miss.
According to statistician Garry Morgan, against pace since 2024, Shafique has 14 outside edges, and 32 inside. That is quite the stat.
England started attacking his outside edge, and ended up going for the inside.
Eventually it was missing the inside edge that brought about his wicket. It was a great ball from Ollie Robinson, nipping back a long way. But Shafique was already outside it to begin with.
Shafique is as pretty as a picture when he plays the on drive, but he’s like a painting that is hung, with a tilt to one side.
England will adore you for a day, Mr Robinson
by Behram Qazi
Happy Ollie Robinson day to those who celebrate.
After six long years since their last Test on English soil, Pakistan found themselves reeling at 6 for 2 on the morning of Day 1.
Ollie went the full Robinson, pinning Azan Awais in front on the first ball of the series, and former Yorkshire captain Shan Masood soon after. He would do the same to Saud Shakeel later in the day, which the southpaw was too late to review, making it a hattrick of LBWs.
On a nippy morning in Leeds, the former Wisden columnist was hooping the ball around like a hummingbird in a thunderstorm. It took an actual burst of rain for Pakistan to get to the lunch break, with the sun beating down at Headingley after, easing the conditions for batting.
Two of the four Yorkshire batters from Pakistan - Abdullah Shafique and Imam-ul-Haq - made hay, before it was back to being Robinson’s feast.
Imam, after having weathered the storm so well, playing with soft hands and within himself, chased at one in signature fashion, completing his trademark edge to the cordon. Abdullah, after driving the ball well enough to make Jarrod rave about him, was cleaned up by a Robinson peach, becoming his fourth victim.
Pakistan lost 8 wickets for just 74 runs, succumbing to 171 all out after being 2 down for 97 runs, staying true to their identity. Shafique’s half century in his first ever Test innings in England was the only effort worth writing home about for the touring side.
Josh Tongue got a good lick in as well, sending stand-in captain Salman Ali Agha’s bails for a vacation, and destroying Ali Usman’s shin off successive deliveries. He had accounted for Imam and Mohammad Rizwan, and then Mohammad Abbas later to grab five wickets of his own.
Robinson, however, remained the main protagonist. He ended with 5 for 51 in 18 overs, his fifth five-wicket haul in 40 Test innings. Four of his scalps were frontline batters, and his 88 wickets in the format have come at a touch over 21 apiece.
England’s finest Ollie, Simoned and Garfunkeled Pakistan with Jamie Smith standing both well behind and up to the stumps. The metronome went nip, nip, nip, yo-yoing Pakistan’s batters on a string. If there was a kingdom of one-trick ponies, Robinson would be a unicorn. A true master of one.
So here’s to you, Mr. Robinson; England will adore you for a day. Hey, hey, hey.
A Pakistan kind of story for England
by Rob Barron
The first Test of a new regime. An interim coach and a returning captain, when it should’ve been the other way round. Anticipation of certain chaos. This is Pakistan’s kind of story, but England were living it.
Even the weather played a part, it was inevitable. It’s been glorious sunshine every day for months and the first Test was starting in 15 minutes. Everything seemed to be pointing to a disappointing home performance, including underwhelming flag-waving by some grown adults who looked like they’d been asked to get the attention of an ice cream van. Bemused players wandering through . Surely a forlorn hope to expect something beautiful would ignite the mayhem.
And then it happened. Laura Wright sang.
We’ve heard the Pakistan anthem hundreds of times and while - like basically every song ever written - it’s miles better than England’s wishing that a man with sausages instead of fingers will rule over them for ages, we’d never really noticed it. Then Wright sang. No accompaniment. A haunting, pitch-perfect, ethereal opus of a performance. The perfect prelude to the certain chaos.
Then Ollie Robinson trundled in, nipped one back into Azan Awais’s pads and Pakistan lost a wicket off the first ball of the series. Of course they did.