For a while in the afternoon session it appeared Pakistan were losing their way but, after his role with the ball, Yasir Shah played a starring role again
Jarrod Kimber at Lord's16-Jul-2016Yasir Shah took his sixth wicket early on Saturday morning. It was a good ball that trapped Steven Finn straight in front of the stumps. A few balls later England’s innings is finished. Yasir can put his feet up.The problem is, he isn’t the only person with his feet up.You can see Younis Khan’s toe twitching well before Jake Ball is at the crease, the left foot is weirdly twitching towards the bowler, the right foot is rattling around in his boot. Then he moves into a weird half squat in front of his stumps. When the ball arrives there is a leap at it, across his stumps, towards silly mid-off, as if he has been tickled by a monster made of feathers, or electrocuted, or like he is trying to lead with his belly button.The only real problem is now after all that twitching, shuffling and jumping he has to play a cricket shot against very good bowling on a wicket that has started playing slightly oddly. His head is not over the ball, it is barely still on his shoulders, and his feet seem to be on hot coals, or allergic to grass, or covered with haemorrhoids.Younis isn’t batting, he’s surviving, somehow. Even what should have been a normal cover drive becomes an abnormal monstrosity that has a squat-thrust angled bat. It is only when the ball goes through the field that he moves into the correct foot position with an awkward shuffle that he seems to be doing so he just remembers how he is supposed to be doing this. His feet are playing several shots per ball, his hands, barely one. Neither agree with each other.And when he doesn’t play a shot, it’s like he’s doing an interpretive dance move to represent how a bird flies through a puff of smoke, but with a broken leg, terrible stage fright and no dance training.England just sat and watched, they clearly decided that whatever this was, it wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, last, and they went dry. They bowled very well, they kept the field in a ring, and waited for the implosion.It was Azhar Ali who broke first. He nearly ran himself out when he had thought to himself that there was only a single, and then something clicked in his head and he decided it was two. And then it was the pressure of the scoreboard’s stillness. In four overs they scored seven runs, and in the end of that period Azhar was out lbw. If there is a culture with a word that means both unlucky and inevitable at the same time, it was that.Then Misbah-ul-Haq came in. His first ball was a defensive shot that suggested we were going to get austerity Misbah, not world-record quickest-Test-hundred Misbah. Twelve balls come and go, and Misbah brings stability by watching Younis bat from the non-striker’s end and add only one more run. Then Misbah faces Moeen Ali for his second ball. Alastair Cook set a ring field, an outer ring field. Men simply scattered to boundaries, knowing that Misbah may and try to dine.What they didn’t know was that Misbah was going to enter the buffet, strip off his clothes and jump mouth first into the shrimp bowl. He had faced two balls and somehow transformed from Misbah to Shahid Afridi.Somehow, against all cricket logic, Younis survives the session. As does Asad Shafiq, who does it with much more clam and technique.Then Younis hammers a ball back onto his stumps. On a normal day it would be one of his worst shots, today it was among his best. It was the slowest scoring from him since his first Test match.Then there is a brief interlude of Pakistan batting so well through Shafiq and Sarfraz Ahmed that they looked like completely taking the game away before Shafiq misses a good one.And there he is again, Yasir Shah. Promoted four spots up the order, working on what should have been his day off.Not long into their partnership Sarfraz dropped the ball at his feet and tried to invent a single, Yasir said no, saving a horrible run out. The throw hit the stumps and trickled a metre or two away, and Sarfraz was off for another non-existent single. He was like the rat that touched the electric cheese, and went back to make sure. It was Yasir who took the cheese away.It was also another dot ball, and they had been growing, and during the next over, Yasir started to feel it. The further the over went, the louder the crowd got, and the more nervous Yasir bats. He’s not in the UAE now, Lord’s may not be a coliseum like Edgbaston or Old Trafford, but this isn’t home, even a neutral home.This is a real crowd, and they have noticed England’s chance. It is now 15 balls since a run and Yasir is 2 off 23. The last ball is full and stops a bit on the wicket, Yasir tries to turn it, it takes the leading edge and it floats. England fielders start celebrating as it does, the crowd rises with it, but the ball then dips. Broad is the fielder at mid-off and he is on his way in, but it’s low and in front of him, and it’s not a catch made for a man of his height. But he gets there just as it’s about to bounce, and there is grass, hand, and by the time the English players have returned to the ground from their celebratory leaps, it is clear so has the ball.Sarfraz is dropped by Jonny Bairstow, and just like that it is Yasir, in his first Test in England, who is the guy who can score the most runs, the safest way, so that he has a target to bowl at. He is less rattled than Azhar, less airborne than Younis, and less crazy than Misbah. His experienced team-mates at Nos. 3, 4 and 5 had made 48 runs, from a lot of balls, and Yasir gets better with every ball. When Sarfraz is out, he just continues to score runs and give Pakistan hope, right up until the second last over of the day.Yasir drop-kicks one over midwicket, gets his highest Test score and then artfully glances. Two clever shots and then an over later Pakistan’s day is finished.Tomorrow, like today, will start with Yasir. Tomorrow, like today, might finish with him as well. There just won’t be any time in between to put his up feet.