Shan Masood lamented “the same mistakes” Pakistan keep making after they slipped to an eighth Test defeat on the trot in South Africa and their seventh in their last nine matches. In a lopsided game, the final twist belonged to South Africa as they recovered from an epic collapse that saw them lose four wickets for three runs to register an unbeaten 50-ball 51-run partnership that saw them win by two wickets, and alongside it a place in the World Test Championship final.
“We had the game in our hand, be it with the bat or the ball,” Masood said. “I don’t need to add anything and sound like a broken record. [I’m] extremely proud of the effort, but going forward as a team we must be ruthless. We have competed well in these conditions and I have said that before when we played in Australia in similar conditions. We had the game neck and even here twice, we had them eight down and we thought we were in a reasonable position and even with the bat when we could have extended our score in both innings.”
Although Pakistan have not won in South Africa since 2007, they have never come as close as they did in this Test. But collapses with the bat in both innings – they lost 4 for 22 in the first innings and 7 for 84 in the second – were compounded by toothlessness in the field towards the tail: South Africa’s ninth and tenth wicket partnerships added a combined 139 across two innings for the loss by just two wickets.
“All four rounds [cost us]” said Masood. “We can only look at ourselves. You’re going to make mistakes over several days, but you need a cushion. I thought when it came to a time where we could get that cushion with the bat, first and third innings, or whether it was with the ball, when we had them down eight on two occasions. We didn’t have that cushion, and then you get partnerships like Bosch’s jump-in and Rabada and Jansen, and you don’t have enough of a cushion to keep a winning position.’
An inability to kill off games has been a familiar theme for Masood, one he has highlighted so often that he was conscious of sounding “like a broken record”. In Australia, Pakistan found themselves in positions of dominance – or at least parity – in two of the three Tests, as well as in both matches against Bangladesh. Pakistan has chopped and changed personnel; the bowlers, coaches and selection panel have all been dismissed during this period. However, Masood maintained that his team had the ability to get over the line.
“I don’t think it’s a quality issue. The quality is there and we’ve seen it at different points. To be a top team, to be in South Africa’s place, to play a WTC final, those are the things where you have to be reckless.
“Sometimes you learn the hard way. You can’t use that as an excuse, but the more we play Test cricket, the more people get in sync. A lot of the players were playing for the first time in these conditions. It can be a really hard lesson , where you feel like you’ve got the other team under pressure, but you still need to get the job done.
“It can also feel as if we have had a very good collaboration with Saud [Shakeel] and Babar [Azam]or Kamran [Ghulam] and [Mohammad] Rizwan, or me and Saim [Ayub] in both rounds, and you feel that you can take them on and have a great score. You are never put in those conditions, either with the bat or the ball. We learn the hard way through defeat, but the challenge is that we have to react to this and make sure that when we get into winning positions, we make sure that we win the game instead of bringing the other team down back in it. “
There was still enough encouragement from the Pakistan captain to highlight the contributions he felt deserved more. Mohammad Abbas, playing his first Test in more than three years at 34, bowled 19.3 unbroken overs over the second innings as he scrapped to pull a win out of the hat for Pakistan, registering a career-best figure of 6 for 54 in the second. laps. He is now three wickets away from 100 and has the best Test bowling average for a Pakistani in history (minimum 15 wickets).
“The message is clear, age is just a number,” Masood said. “The disappointing thing is that such a performance should be on the winning side. I thought Saud Shakeel’s innings too [was excellent] – if we had batted a little better with him – he would have got a hundred. These two performances deserved to be on the winning side and unfortunately they are not.”
