With an application rarely seen in their batting performances overseas and a constant willingness to believe, Pakistan made history, and yet didn’t quite make it
Jarrod Kimber at the Gabba19-Dec-2016The local cafes have been packed for days, but on the fifth day, there is no queue to get your ten-dollar lunch specials. There is no police outside the ground making sure cricket fans don’t get run over. Neroli Meadows and Merv Hughes have almost the entire Woolloongabba Place Park to themselves for some TV work. Only a handful watch Pakistan in the nets. Most of the people walking around the ground are not fans but Cricket Australia, Queensland Cricket or Brisbane Lions employees. The plastic bollards to give the crowd extra walking space are being taken down even as a few spectators walk past them.That is because no one really believes Pakistan can win.Off the second ball of the day, Asad Shafiq plays and misses. Yasir Shah plays a flash uppercut soon after, and you can feel Australia will just get one right, and the lack of crowd will be justified by a quick finish. But Australia don’t get many right.A single guided to deep point is just one of the 490 needed, but it brings the target to under a hundred and cricket makes that a noteworthy occurrence. Shafiq is farming the strike, making sure that Yasir doesn’t have to face too many balls. Apparently, he hasn’t watched Yasir in the nets over the last two days, because he has looked more assured than Younis, more in-form than Misbah and technically superior to Sarfraz Ahmed. Shafiq plays and misses again at one; that may have hit a crack. Will this heroic defiance be ended by simple day-five deterioration?But as Yasir plays some effortless cover drives, and Shafiq stops playing and missing, the first signs of tension start to show on Australian faces. A graceful push through cover compels David Warner to throw every part of himself at stopping the ball. Instead, it eludes him and gently nudges the boundary triangle. The total crosses 400, another pointless landmark, another moral victory for Pakistan. More belief.Yasir plays an offside waft, not even a real shot; the field is up, and he was sucked into the wrong shot. The ball is passed to Steven Smith who sighs for what seems like seven seconds. Yasir backs up his weak shot with an ordinary stroke that misses the ball by about a foot, and instead hits the ground. Matthew Wade and Smith show some excitement, but it’s not a real appeal, it’s just the hope of a real appeal. It’s now half an hour, and the game is different than before: there are two set batsmen, one frustrated captain, two tiring strike bowlers and one ever-softening ball.A section of the crowd made the Gabba Test feel like a home game for Pakistan•Getty ImagesIan Healy talks to the Pakistani fans, of which there are few, but they are loud enough for it to feel like a home game. One fan claims they will win, not only this Test, but all the Tests. It is different from the passionate pessimism of regular Pakistan fans, but even gung-ho patriotism aside, you can see his point.Australia seems to have no definite plan, no grip on the contest, and now Jackson Bird is warming up. Bird has bowled well and has earned his spot by taking wickets, but he’s at his best with a new ball, winkling out top-order batsmen. His first ball seems gentle and apologetic, and is guided with grace and no effort by Shafiq, who happily lets Yasir face Bird, in a way he never did for Mitchell Starc or Josh Hazlewood. Nathan Lyon comes on and Shafiq pushes him away effortlessly as well, and has no qualms about Yasir facing him either – this despite the fact that Yasir is almost dismissed from an excellent Lyon ball straightaway.During a Bird over, Warner comes excitedly to talk to Smith at slip. Next ball, Bird hits a crack; it’s probably not true, but I like to think that Warner said, ‘all we need to do is hit that crack a lot’. The ball flies past the one floating slip, and Smith reacts by putting out a fly slip, who is so square he’s almost a fly gully. Yasir responds with a push through the covers for two. Warner chases after it like no man has ever chased after a two in the covers. There is such power in his running, such desperation, and yet it was always going to be two. It was as if Warner thought that by running fast, he could change Australia’s new fate, of being on the wrong side of the biggest chase in cricket.At the one-hour mark, our stats team point out that only once in Pakistan’s Test history before this have their numbers 7 to 10 scored over 20 in the same innings.Smith tries something new: a short leg, a short midwicket; fly gully goes back to standard gully and Bird tries to go straight. On a morning of almost no obvious plans or proactive calls, this one is quite clear. Yasir reacts by drop-kicking the straight ball over square leg’s head like he’s operating Viv Richards in a computer game. Forget belief, Yasir now has swag.Lyon beats Yasir and appeals for a caught behind; Wade takes the bails off, and he asks for a stumping. Half the team appeal to one umpire, half to the other, some for a catch, some for a stumping, and probably a few for lbw. It’s not an appeal for a wicket; it is not out in any of cricket’s ten dismissal laws. It’s an appeal for help.After a memorable ton, it needed something even more special from Mitchell Starc to remove Asad Shafiq•AFPIt is then, with what might be thousands but could be just hundreds of people in the ground, I suddenly realise; I could be at one of the single most amazing days of cricket in history. Pakistan still need heaps, Australia still only need two balls, but it doesn’t feel like that. All my cricket background is saying, this will stop, that they’ll get a good ball in, or Pakistan will struggle when the overwhelming nature of chasing 490 gets down to a handful of runs. But I don’t care. Now I believe.When a strong drive from Shafiq crashes into the non-striker’s stumps, there is a sudden panic, as Yasir doesn’t have his bat down. But when you see the replay you see a ball heading for Bird’s hand, only to take an exaggerated dip. Now it might have been spin on the ball that made it do that, or the game now deciding that Pakistan must win. I decide the dip existed, and that it was a sign of a supernatural presence – Mother Cricket – guiding it away.Starc comes back on, Yasir flays, and Shafiq goes down to tell him not to. Yasir pushes Starc through cover; Starc looks at Smith, and Smith shrugs back at Starc. Everyone is talking to someone, every ball. Ian Gould talks to Yasir about something, and suddenly I need to know what is going on: why are they talking, what does it mean, why can’t I hear them? Every single small moment, a lingering look at cover and point, or a back pat between the batsmen is now the single most important thing I have ever seen.
Shafiq’s bat has become something extraordinary, like it was made from a willow tree that was struck by lightning, crafted by Hattori Hanzo and one that he, and only he, could pull out of an enchanted stone
And Asad Shafiq. I mean what is happening there? He was supposed to be in poor form, still hiding down at six and not taking up his rightful place at three or four. He was barely involved in the first innings and now look at him. He seems to have worked out the exact mathematical dimensions of this ground to find every single or two he needs. He’s batting with Misbah’s mind and Younis’ self-determination, and prettier than either. Shafiq’s bat has become something extraordinary, like it was made from a willow tree that was struck by lightning, crafted by Hattori Hanzo and one that he, and only he, could pull out of an enchanted stone. With it, he calmly guides another ball away to the boundary, calmly like this isn’t the chance for perhaps the most incredible victory, but just a club game with some mates.Yasir slashes at point. Lyon launches himself as best he can without the athletic gifts that some of his team-mates have, gets a finger to it – just one which you can see bend as the ball crashes through. The other fielders clean up beyond him, the batsmen run three, the ball’s returned to Wade, who throws it up to mid-off, and Lyon is still on the ground. Shafiq takes a single next ball, and Yasir is back on strike. He leaves a ball after a shuffle down the wicket; it hits his back leg and on commentary, Mark Nicholas says, “They ask, they ask, they get it, they get it, they get it”. But just to prove that Yasir’s judgment all morning has been on song, he reviews instantaneously, and it’s overturned almost as quick.But the reviews show up something else, something which will be far more important: reverse swing. It’s not clear, until another one crashes into the pads, and yes, that’s what it is. Oh Pakistan, it had to be that, didn’t it?Starc’s next over has him around the wicket going at the batsmen. He gets one down the legside and Yasir moves across and it takes something as it goes through to Wade. Starc goes up to appeal, but the ball is trickling along the ground and Wade is desperately trying to pick it up, like he can make up for what has just happened. He gets up and seems to say to everyone, ‘it’s just pad’, or that it didn’t carry, but essentially, ‘it’s all cool guys’. The replays show there was bat, but the replays that needed to show whether the catch carried, never comes. Wade finishes the over by fumbling another ball and they don’t take the run. Wade walks down pitch trying to spin the helmet on his hand casually. It doesn’t spin well, it doesn’t look casual. It is barely repressed panic.Steven Smith’s deadly accuracy allowed Australia to breathe again•Getty ImagesThe panic shifts though with Shafiq’s first play and miss in an age. There is no doubt now, the ball is moving, the spell is breaking.Next over, Starc is around the wicket again, and a good yorker is just squeezed away by Yasir. Now it is Starc v Shafiq. Starc, like a chum-baited shark, isn’t the same bowler as earlier. The ball jumps up at Shafiq, fast and mean. The man who has been a Zen batting master is suddenly everywhere at once, in the air, facing the wrong way, each limb doing a different thing. But the ball has somehow ignored the chaos to find the leading edge, and it balloons up.It’s not that high, it’s not a tough catch, but it goes to Warner – the man who earlier tried to beat fate by running fast – on a platter with a champagne flute beside it. After the false dawns and optimistic cries of hope, the Australians wait for the catch to be completed, and when it is, they scream, the way you do when you have just realised you aren’t about to become the laughing stock of the world. Not Starc, he barely raises a hand.Shafiq is even more emotionless. Shafiq was stoic all innings, and his face is the same now as he takes his gloves off and starts heading off. That is until Yasir walks over and embraces him. Then it hits him, and it becomes obvious that up until that very moment, he believed. He believed more than Misbah, more than the loud Pakistan fan on Channel Nine, more than anyone could, or should. He takes his helmet off, and at first he isn’t even walking towards the dressing rooms, just drifting off the ground. Of all the things he had allowed himself to dream, the walk off the ground as a loser wasn’t one.Rahat Ali’s reputation as an entertaining batsman, for almost none of the right reasons, means that Yasir decides to hit out. He tries to slog Starc with no luck, and then he tries to hit a yorker. He makes contact, but he doesn’t know where, so he takes off, before realising it has gone behind him, and he turns. Smith at first just gently takes the dribbling ball, but then, like a gunfighter who sees a man drop his weapon, he goes for the kill. It was Smith who allowed Pakistan to dream, for Shafiq to be the hero, and now it is the same hands that end the match.Maybe it was reverse swing, Pakistan’s most dramatic superpower, that changed the balance, but it was quality fielding, their one eternal weakness, that finished them. It was 40 runs those who weren’t watching will say, not even that close. They won’t get it. Just like how those who didn’t believe in Pakistan didn’t get that they believed in the first place. And they may have lost, but after all that, you know they still believe.
