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    • PAK vs ENG 3rd Test 3rd Day – Sajid and Noman enjoy the moment as Pakistan’s plans come together
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    PAK vs ENG 3rd Test 3rd Day – Sajid and Noman enjoy the moment as Pakistan’s plans come together

    Vaseline Posted on

    Two weeks before they played each other in the 2017 Australian Open final, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were sick, injured athletes who might be disappearing into the twilight. When, against the odds, they faced each other in the final, the victorious Federer famously said: “Tennis is a cruel sport, there is no such thing as a draw, but if there were to be one, I would love it have accepted.” one tonight and share it with Rafa.”
    Sajid Khan and Noman Ali had also disappeared from view until a fortnight ago, having not played first-class cricket and having no realistic ambitions for an imminent return to the Pakistan side. So when they did that, ultimately sharing 39 of England’s 40 wickets that fell in the past two Tests, Sajid, who was presented with the Player of the Series trophy, expressed much the same sentiment.

    “Nomi bhai is one of the most experienced players on Pakistan’s domestic circuit,” Sajid said during the presentation. “We should share these Player of the Series awards. He is a great spinner who has also guided and helped me, so all credit goes to him.”

    For England this will be a series to quickly forget, but in Pakistan this duo will be remembered. That they would run through the English batters seems inevitable in retrospect; but when England moved to 211 for 2 in the first innings in Multan – on a delivery that Sajid said offered something “even if the spinner did nothing” – Sajid and Noman’s reputations were at stake.

    And while Sajid insists the match situation did not worry him, the weight of expectations on him was another matter. “There wasn’t that much pressure (from the series), but (there was) some pressure from the comeback. The captain, the vice-captain, the whole team worked well together. We play domestic cricket together, on these kind of wickets, so There wasn’t as much pressure.”

    The 38-year-old Noman has the experience of not taking any opportunity for granted. “I feel like it has been a while since we have performed well in Pakistan,” he said, sitting next to Sajid at the post-series press conference. “We are grateful that we had the circumstances to win the series in this way. The way we came back is extremely gratifying, and we hope that we will have similar circumstances in the future and that we will cause problems for other teams.”

    But Noman also realized the extent to which Pakistan could get away with this. The plan to turn sharply to turn was, like the surfaces they decided to use, half-baked. Their first-choice spinner Abrar Ahmed was left out of the series, and the three spinners Pakistan called on had not played first-class cricket since January. If England were to be defeated, it would be thanks to the muscle memory and experience of Sajid and Noman.

    If Pakistan wants to adopt this strategy in the future – a prospect Noman unsurprisingly favored – he believed they had to do it the right way. “I think if you want to prepare spinners, you have to play more red-ball cricket,” he said. “In first-class cricket you get all kinds of conditions with new and old ball. When you do that you get a lot of experience.”

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