Like blindly following the recipe book for an exotic dish, it was hard to say what Naseem Shah was cooking up at first this morning. He began groggily, throwing the ball up in search of swing as if this was a Rawalpindi winter day and not a Centurion summer one. He barely broached 135kph, and was much too wide, so any away movement only meant an extra lunge for Mohammad Rizwan. If something was brewing, it was difficult to tell what that might have been.
But it was that kind of morning session, a bowling effort on psychedelics, balls just floating into the ether, hovering there briefly as if the laws of gravity had briefly been suspended, and barely kissing the surface before dancing away into the wind. On a pitch where banging the ball into the surface has been the most proven way to get results, Naseem was rejecting conventional wisdom, no discernible logic behind this iconoclasm. Mohammad Abbas, 13 years his senior, tried following the rulebook to a tee, bless him. But at his pace, with little work going into the ball off 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 quite the oeuvre of glorious failure, the universe seemingly conspiring to refuse to give him what he was owed. 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-handedness was well-deserved.
“You have to learn to adjust in new conditions,” Naseem admitted after the match. “It’s not easy but you have to be disciplined and adjust to different conditions quickly. The pitch here is at a bit of a height and the ground at a depression, so I think you have to adjust as a bowler, and it took me a few overs to do that.”
But there was something Test cricket saw in Naseem, something it liked. In a country that has recently seen its express quick either lose their pace, or their interest in Test cricket, or both, Naseem still has it all.
By his second spell, he was pushing up as high as 145.9kph, he had dragged his lengths back. The rebellious streak was gone, the spell was beginning to come of age, and the recipe book was being faithfully followed. When 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 Pakistan bowlers without being rewarded for it.
David Bedingham had ridden his luck against Naseem, surviving a review off the first ball of Naseem’s return spell. Pakistan, to be fair, managed their reviews about as efficiently as many lottery winners do their prizes, but it did signal a shift in intensity from a bowler whose ceiling remains a formidable force to handle. Bedingham soon paid the price for his insouciance when a shade of extra bounce, thanks to improved lengths and higher pace, became too hot to handle, and Naseem had begun to put a spell of proper old-ball Test match fast bowling together either side of lunch. Kyle Verreynne was goaded into a similar shot, and outdone by a similar delivery.
By now, the crowd by Castle Corner had broken out into a chorus of grudging respect; South African spectators cannot help, it would seem, but respect a fast bowler operating at the top of his game. Chants of “Naseem! Naseem” began to go up every time he walked back to the mark, but it was the afternoon, and they were well lubricated by now, so you may be able to put some of the generosity down to that. Apparently, SuperSport Park sold more than 1 million Rand worth of alcohol on day one; the eye test would suggest day two wasn’t far behind.
Naseem knew, though, 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 they may not get one at all.
On other occasions, in other countries, that might have been work done for a brittle, express pace bowler, but Masood felt Pakistan had no other well to turn to. He tied Aiden Markram up at one end, inducing him into a false shot against Khurram Shahzad at the other end. And still Naseem bowled, him powering on from the media end blending into the background of the day. Drinks came and went, and Naseem was still there, pace slightly down, but banging 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 obviously when the captain asks you, you have to be ready. That is my habit as a fast bowler, to accept the ball when needed. I hadn’t known it would happen, but the captain thought about which bowler would be more impactful, and asked me to bowl. My body’s fine.”
However, the good balls were no longer producing edges, and the occasional loosener that crept into his spell was being put away by Corbin Bosch, exactly the sort of player who Pakistan tend to allow dream career starts. There were five overs between Naseem getting a break, and the captain turning right back to him, but now, Test cricket was playing hard-to-get with him once more.
The field had been spread out for Bosch, the sniff of optimism from the early afternoon had gone. The crowd, too, began to treat Naseem as the figure of heroic failure he was becoming as the innings dragged on, playfully booing every appeal, and then shouting “review it” once Pakistan’s profligacy had squandered them all.
South Africa had added 88 for the last two wickets, and, despite delivering more overs than any other bowler, faster than any other bowler, better than any other bowler, Naseem’s figures showed he was the most expensive of the three specialist quicks. It is a wonder Naseem plays Test cricket with a smile on his face, but Pakistan are fortunate he does. And perhaps, a pleasant festive afternoon when Test cricket briefly smiles back is all the reward he needs.
