One day of this Test has been dominated by the heavens, but Jamal has controlled the other two
Danyal Rasool05-Jan-20244:32
Can Pakistan avoid a whitewash in Sydney?
The last time Pakistan played a Test match in Sydney, Aamer Jamal, aspiring cricketer and reluctant bricklayer, sat watching in the general admission stands with two grade cricketers from Hawkesbury. The last time Pakistan took a first-innings lead in a Test match in Australia also came in Sydney in 2010, when Jamal was a cricket-mad teenager back in Pakistan. The last time Pakistan won a Test match in Australia – again in Sydney – Jamal was yet to be born. This time, as Pakistan played a Test match in Sydney, Jamal was busy tumbling Australia over.It is perhaps disingenuous to describe it as a master plan coming together, because Pakistan felt the time to implement said master plan might have been 84 runs earlier when Australia were wobbling in the morning. Steven Smith and Marnus Labuschagne looked almost bored as they compiled an uncompelling partnership that took Australia to 187 for 2. Labuschagne was content to bat out five consecutive maidens early on before Sajid Khan’s introduction injected some welcome – if not entirely unexpected – impetus into the scoring.Pakistan went to the short balls and packed the leg-side field so tightly it might have breached social distancing guidelines a few years earlier. But Smith and Labuschagne wouldn’t take the bait, scoring 12 runs in 41 such deliveries. Agha Salman kept his lines tight, but the batters’ defence was tighter. At one point, there was a brief delay when the fourth umpire jogged past the sightscreen. Soon after, there was a significantly longer one when Smith spotted a roll of discarded tape on the sightscreen, sending a poor SCG groundstaff member clambering over to fetch it. Against the resplendent background of 37,000 people clad in pink for day three of the SCG Test, the somnambulant state of proceedings was a powerful antidote.Smith was almost bored enough to drive straight to short cover with three men stationed there to trigger the first mini-collapse as the hosts lost 3 for 18 runs, but the match had resumed its familiar attritional leitmotif as tea beckoned. Mitchell Marsh and Alex Carey shunned belligerent run-scoring in favour of cautious compilation, aware the only threat to the hosts’ dominance was a big first-innings lead for Pakistan.Jamal watched as Pakistan first delayed taking the new ball, and then handed it to Mir Hamza and Hasan Ali for a burst. He was just about as helpless to change his side’s situation as he would have been watching from the general admission stands seven years ago as Australia spent the next nine overs scoring at five an over and speeding towards Pakistan’s total. But he has been to Pakistan what Pat Cummins has for Australia this series, the man Pakistan eventually have to keep turning back to for impact.And what an impact. Jamal had an absorbing contest with Marsh in Melbourne that should have ended with an early dismissal after the batter took him on, only for a drop in the slips. Here, two balls after Marsh drove him through square, he dared the batter to do it again, and when Marsh miscued, Shan Masood made no mistake at mid-off.Jamal has never been anything but candid on and off the field, and said with raw emotion that he “went to bed thinking about Pat Cummins” and how he was one wicket ahead of him in the series charts. It almost seemed as if that emotion carried over into the delivery he bowled, the dipping full toss carrying all the subtlety of the bricklayer he briefly was in a previous life. It crashed into Cummins’ pad and was smashing into leg stump.Aamer Jamal had Usman Khawaja caught behind down the leg side•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesJamal has spoken frankly of the struggles he has had to endure to find himself in the “career of his dreams” and perhaps it is no surprise he is more of a realist than an impressionist. He shut down any talk of sophisticated tactical nous behind that late flurry of wickets, preferring to attribute it to momentum. That momentum saw him sweep past Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon with minimal fuss, conceding just four for the final four wickets as Pakistan stole a 14-run lead. He might essentially have been cleaning up the tail, but that is something Pakistan have struggled with to damaging effect this series; Australia’s last four put on 75 runs in the third innings in Melbourne in a 79-run win.He is now level with Cummins on 18 wickets, but unlikely to go to bed with any more harmonious thoughts. The momentum he spoke of would also lift Australia’s bowlers to devastating, probably decisive, effect as Pakistan lost five wickets for nine runs to cancel out the gains Jamal had helped them make just an hour earlier.It was perhaps fitting that Jamal was stood at the striker’s end facing the final ball of the day. He was batting at No. 9, and yet Pakistan still somehow needed him to keep Australia out when moments earlier, he had helped them break in.”I’m still pretty confident we’re still in the game,” he said. “It could have happened to any team. It happened to us. But if we get to 150-170, it’ll be a fighting total.”One day of this Test has been dominated by the heavens, but Jamal has controlled the other two. You imagine he knows better than anybody that if Pakistan are to get to that fighting total, that ratio will have to go up to three in four.There are surely limits on the number of times Jamal can produce miracles for this side, which is frustrating because there are perhaps none on the alacrity with which his side, in turn, can squander them. When Jamal bowls his heart out trying – in all likelihood, in vain – to defend an impossibly low score on Saturday, you almost wonder if the switch from bricklayer to Pakistan cricket miracle worker is more of a lateral career move than it first appears.
