SA vs Pak – Pakistan’s best, Naseem Shah, smiles at Test cricket on a roller-coaster day

On By Littum

Like blindly following the recipe book of an exotic dish, it was hard to tell what Naseem Shah was making at first this morning. He began groggily, throwing the ball up in search of swing as if this was a Rawalpindi winter’s day and not a Centurion summer. He barely reached 135km/h and was far too wide, so any outfield movement meant only an extra out for Mohammad Rizwan. If something was brewing, it was hard to say what it might have been.

But it was that kind of morning session, a bowling effort on psychedelics, balls just floating in the ether, hovering there briefly as if the laws of gravity had been briefly suspended, barely kissing the surface before dancing away in the wind. On a pitch where hitting the ball into the surface has been the most proven way to achieve results, Naseem rejected conventional wisdom, no discernible logic behind this iconoclasm. Mohammad Abbas, 13 years his senior, tried to follow the rulebook to a tee, bless him. But at his pace, with little work in the ball from his wrist, even the Centurion surface struggled to give him a leg up.

So Shan Masood took him off after a four-over burst. Naseem has built up an entire oeuvre of glorious failure, with the universe seemingly conspiring to refuse to give him his due. But he knows better than most how frugal with the distribution of joy the world can sometimes be, and he will have known that on this occasion his empty hand was well deserved.

“You have to learn to adapt in new conditions,” Naseem admitted after the match. “It’s not easy, but you have to be disciplined and quickly adapt to different conditions. The pitch here is a bit high and the ground in a depression, so I think you have to adapt as a bowler and it took me a few extras to do it.”

But there was something Test cricket saw in Naseem, something it liked. In a country that has recently seen its fast bowlers either lose their pace, or their interest in Test cricket or both, Naseem still has it all.

On his second spell, he pushed up as high as 145.9 km/h, he had dragged himself back. The rebellious streak was gone, the spell had begun to mature, and the recipe book was faithfully followed. As it still wouldn’t produce a wicket, Naseem dealt with the setbacks with wistful smiles rather than visible agitation. After all, he had seen from the dugout the fickle nature of Test cricket’s generosity; Kagiso Rabada had bowled better than any of the Pakistani bowlers without being rewarded for it.

David Bedingham had run his luck against Naseem, surviving a review from the first ball of Naseem’s return delivery. Pakistan, to be fair, managed their reviews about as effectively as many lottery winners do their prizes, but it signaled a shift in intensity from a bowler whose ceiling remains a formidable force to deal with. Bedingham soon paid the price for his discomfort as a tinge of extra bounce, thanks to improved lengths and higher pace, became too hot to handle and Naseem was beginning to regret proper old-ball Test match fast bowling together either side of lunch. Kyle Verreynne was poked into a similar shot and edged by a similar delivery.

Now the crowd at Castle Corner had broken into a chorus of grudging respect; South African spectators cannot help, it seems, but respect a fast bowler operating at the top of his game. Chants of “Naseem! Naseem” started going up every time he went back to the mark, but it was afternoon and they were well lubricated now, so maybe you can put some of the generosity down to that. Apparently, SuperSport Park sold more than 1 million Rands of alcohol on day one; the eye test suggests that day two was not far behind.

“You have to learn to adapt to new conditions. It’s not easy, but you have to be disciplined and quickly adapt to different conditions.”

Naseem Shah

However, Naseem knew that this day had been generous to Pakistan; none of the other bowlers had come close to matching his quality, and yet South Africa were suddenly seven down; the woefully out-of-form Marco Jansen was meat and drink for Naseem. By then, Naseem’s second spell was a match-turning one: 3 for 28 in five overs, and the question turned from the size of South Africa’s lead to the possibility that they might not get one at all.

On other occasions, in other countries, it might have been job done for a crisp fast bowler, but Masood felt Pakistan had no other well to turn to. He tied up Aiden Markram at one end and got him to fake a shot at Khurram Shahzad at the other end. And still Naseem bowled and he lit up from the media end and blended into the background of the day. Drinks came and went and Naseem was still there, pace down a bit but pounding it into the pitch and asking the same questions.

“Fast bowling is not easy but you have to be ready. I always try to work hard and bowl more in the nets and even in domestic cricket.

“The team needed it and of course you have to be ready when the captain asks you. It’s my habit as a fast bowler to take the ball when needed. I didn’t know it would happen but the captain thought of which bowler would be more impactful and asked me to bowl My body is fine.”

However, the good balls no longer created edges and the occasional looser that crept into his spell was put away by Corbin Bosch, exactly the kind of player Pakistan tend to allow dream career starts. There were five overs between Naseem getting a break and the captain turning back to him, but now Test cricket was again playing hard to get with him.

The field was spread out for Bosch, the smell of optimism from early afternoon gone. The crowd also began to treat Naseem like the heroic failure he was becoming as the innings dragged on, playfully booing each appeal and then shouting “review it” when Pakistan’s debaucheries had wasted them all.

South Africa had added 88 for the last two wickets and despite bowling more overs than any other bowler, faster than any other bowler, better than any other bowler, Naseem’s figures showed that he was the costliest of the three specialist- quicks. It’s a wonder that Naseem is playing Test cricket with a smile on his face, but Pakistan are lucky that he does. And perhaps a nice celebratory afternoon, when Test cricket briefly smiles back, is all the reward he needs.

Danyal Rasool is ESPNcricinfo’s Pakistan correspondent. @Danny61000