Marcus Trescothick described Pakistan’s late-innings onslaught as a “perfect storm”, after the 21-year-old debutant Razaullah and the 36-year-old Mohammad Abbas combined to score 121 off 123 balls and force a fraying England to come in on the fourth day to chase a target of 130.
The interim coach refused to characterise England’s frequently puzzling efforts in the field as embarassing as Razaullah plundered nine sixes and four fours on his way to a score of 81, and Abbas two sixes – as many as he had scored in 46 career Test innings before the start of this series – in his 42, insisting: “You’ve got to give a bit more credit to them [rather] than trying to target everything that we’ve tried to do.”
“You’d always like to think that you can do it better, and you analyse it afterwards and say, was there an error, or was there a tactic we missed?” Trescothick added.
“You just hope in those situations when you bowl in the right place, which we did on many occasions, that you get the nick, or you bowl them … We hoped to go through them pretty quickly, but they kept smacking it and the young fella came in and made it tricky because when he hit it, he hit it a long way.”
Trescothick praised the all-round performance of Razaullah, who has been a revelation with bat and ball in a much-changed Pakistan side.
“He’s been very impressive, not just with his batting,” he said. “I thought the pace that he bowled at was good to see. You want to see young players coming through into the game with a bit of something about them and he’s got pace, he’s on it in the field, and then he slogs it like that. Fair play, some of the sixes he hit were pretty impressive to watch.”
Razaullah has one previous century to his name, scored last year in his third first-class game – with precisely the same number of runs from boundaries there as here, 70, though with only five sixes – and considers himself an all-rounder.
“I was just attacking,” he said. “If the ball was there to be hit, I went for it.” He was one of the seven players added to the squad last week and travelled with just three bats, two of which he broke while flaying England’s bowling around Birmingham.
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Pakistan now have an outside chance of ending a chaotic tour with an unlikely victory. “Nothing is impossible in cricket,” Abbas said. “Every team faces difficulties and challenges, but as the team spends more time together it is improving. We have got one more chance and anything is possible.”
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