He used to wake up to 5am alarms every year on December 26. Now he’s about to play his first MCG Test, confident Pakistan can end their run of Australian misery
Danyal Rasool21-Dec-2023Perhaps it was Saud Shakeel who gave birth to the Pakistan Way. It is difficult to think of another cricketer on whom the idea could be so pointedly based after looking at how Shakeel went about his business at home a year ago.”Before the Sri Lanka series started, I worked on batting with a more positive mindset,” Shakeel says. “And then I executed that in Sri Lanka.”Related
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Over what was a miserable winter for Pakistan last season, when they lost three Tests out of five and didn’t win a single one at home, Shakeel emerged as a significant positive in the middle order, with 580 runs in five Tests at 72.50.”When you play cricket, your main job is to perform for the team,” he says. “I don’t think of whether I’m new to the team or not. I just want to score runs that win matches for the team.”It was his strike rate of 41.66, though, that got more attention than his sparkling average. Shakeel’s stodgy grit was emblematic of a side that wasn’t just outplayed by two better sides at home, but, perhaps more unforgivably for Pakistan, was also out-styled. Pakistan were a dull, conservative watch over those six weeks, scrambling to save Test matches rather than looking to win them.Shakeel, at least, was doing it somewhat effectively, famously putting together an epic unpbeaten 125 that took more than eight hours and 341 balls to compile. While Pakistan just about managed to rescue that game against New Zealand – the final pair clinging on for 21 balls – how close they had come to winning it was equally noteworthy; when stumps on day five were called, Pakistan were just 15 runs from victory.Thereafter, the Pakistan Way began to emerge. Sequentially, it appeared to be less a cricketing philosophy than a passive-aggressive dig at Pakistan’s player of the season. Shakeel was told he was missing out on scoring opportunities, failing to put away bad deliveries even when the opportunities to do so with very little risk presented themselves. He understood he had the technical ability to go after the bowling more, and in Sri Lanka, he did just that. His strike rate through that series was an impressive 57.95, as he scored an unbeaten double-hundred and a half-century to help Pakistan win 2-0.It is unsurprising, then, that Shakeel can do a better job explaining the elusive Pakistan Way than just about anyone else who’s tried. “The Pakistan Way doesn’t mean you go out and start attacking like mad and only target boundaries,” he says. “The theory behind the Pakistan Way is to look at the situation and take the most positive route out of it. If the situation demands caution, the philosophy doesn’t prevent you from doing that. But always look for positive intent. If you look at my double-hundred in Sri Lanka, there were phases in that innings where I batted slowly, but I always looked for the positive option.”Shakeel added an extra gear to his batting on the tour of Sri Lanka•AFP/Getty ImagesWe’re at the MCG, a ground Shakeel holds special affinity for. When he was younger, he used to set a 5am alarm on December 26 every year, looking to catch the start of the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne. He has just finished a two-and-a-half hour training session at the nets across from the ground, testing his defensive block against pace and using his feet to spin. At one point, Pakistan spin-bowling coach Saeed Ajmal sent down a few deliveries, with Shakeel managing to look assured, something that eluded most cricketers in Ajmal’s heyday.Perhaps, though, that has to do with the conditions, too. “Whenever you come to Australia, it takes time to get used to conditions,” Shakeel says. “We played a practice match in Canberra but the conditions there weren’t the fast-bouncing pitches we got in Perth, so it took us time to get used to that. We’ve moved on from that now and are looking ahead, and getting more and more used to conditions by the day. I haven’t got big runs in the first Test, but my intent was positive there. And that’s the mentality for us as a batting group, to go out there and play positive and attacking cricket.”Anyone who watched that first Test on a pitch that was – even by West Australian standards – exceptionally spicy will understand why Pakistan felt so strongly about the strip prepared for the four-day game in Canberra. While unseasonal rains and a historically flat surface in the capital meant Pakistan were never going to get the sort of authentic experience that awaited them in Perth, the one word every cricketer reverts to is “practice”.”It’s tricky to make the transition from Asia to Perth,” Shakeel a product of routine and method, says. “When I went to Sri Lanka, I had previously gone there on A tours. Unfortunately, I’ve never been to Australia or New Zealand on an A tour so it was quite new for me to adapt to conditions here. The quicker you adapt and the more practice you have, the easier to find it to perform. There was enough time to practice, if the pitches we practiced on weren’t quick enough. But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”I’d never played on a drop-in pitch before, [such as the one] in Perth. It takes one or two days to adjust. But as a professional cricketer, you have to adapt quickly so you’re able to perform. I learned a lot from that match.”And though he managed a modest 52 runs across the two innings, his tendency to get starts in every Test innings remained unabated. He scored 28 and 24, meaning he has not once been dismissed below 20, in a career spanning 15 Test innings. While doing so, he quietly surpassed Everton Weekes’ record of 14 innings, which had stood for 73 years.With that toughest test out of the way, Shakeel feels it might even be a blessing to have gone through that baptism of fire first up. The MCG is unlikely to carry the same spitting venom as Perth did even deep into the fourth day, and the surface most probably won’t break up quite as easily either. That means Australia’s seam attack might not be afforded quite as much assistance as they were at the Optus, with Nathan Lyon potentially finding it trickier to make his presence felt, too.”The practice today was really good. After we played Perth, the pitch here almost feels like Pakistan,” Shakeel says. “The matches in Melbourne, I’ve seen it’s not that hard to bat on. I’m really looking forward to this Test match. The boys are feeling good; it was a very healthy practice session and the players look in good nick. I think you’ll get the chance to see a complete turnaround, especially in this Melbourne Test.After the searing pace and bounce in Perth, Pakistan can expect more straightforward batting conditions in Melbourne•Getty Images”Our country and our fans always have high expectations of you. If you represent Pakistan, it doesn’t matter if you’re inexperienced or not; there are always expectations if you play for Pakistan. I back myself to perform well.”We will try our level best not to repeat mistakes. We did make mistakes in the bowling. The pitch was seaming very well on the first day. Our two inexperienced young bowlers tried hard but it takes time to adjust your lengths. So considering the quality of that pitch, we allowed too many runs to be scored, and found ourselves on the back foot there and then.”But Pakistan clearly felt the practice arrangements agreed to ahead of the tour were a little thin, a point crystallised by the 360-run battering Australia handed out to what looked like an undercooked Pakistan side in Perth. To that end, and with eight days between the first two Tests, the PCB asked for an additional tour game to be wedged in. That will take place at the Junction Oval in Melbourne on December 22 and 23 against a strong Victorian XI side. And while the Junction Oval also has a reputation for being among the flattest tracks in Australia, Pakistan want all the exposure to these conditions they can get.”When you come to Australia, you see they’ve got good experience and a quality bowling attack,” Shakeel says. “When you’re playing in their home conditions it becomes more of a mental challenge than a physical one. We’re aware of our record here but as a team we have to go out there and score runs.”Pakistan’s consecutive defeat tally in Australia now extends to 15 Tests spanning six series stretching back to 1999. As such, most of the players now trying to stem that tide have no reference point to look back upon; eight of the players in the Pakistan squad weren’t even born when Pakistan last won a Test in Australia. Shakeel wasn’t even three months old when it happened.As such, anything that gives Pakistan a straw to clutch at is welcome, and all Pakistan have at the moment is ancient history. The only two venues in this country they have won Tests at are Melbourne and Sydney, the site of the next two Test matches.”There are nerves before you go out to bat, of course,” Shakeel says. “But if I look at the vibe and the feel of the MCG, especially on Boxing Day, it’s special. It’s a very unique feeling and the excitement of this particular Test match is like none other. It’s a huge opportunity for us, still. No Pakistani side has won a series here, so if we perform well and win the series, as a player, think of how much growth that will afford a player throughout a career. So I just look at it as an opportunity.”The boy waking up to 5am alarms continues to dream. And while he’ll never have seen a result pan out his way over those cold winter mornings half a world away, he finds himself in a position to try and give the kids setting those early alarms next week a different experience. No one would want to sleep through that.