Luck can change anytime on the cricket field. The latest example of this is the teams of India and Pakistan. The Indian team, which has been accustomed to easily defeat the opposing teams at home for the last several years, is suddenly seen struggling. At the same time, the picture of the Pakistani team has started changing and this team, which had failed to win the Test match on its soil for the last 3 years, now seems to be making a tremendous comeback. At the time when New Zealand pushed the Indian team on the backfoot in the second Test match in Pune, at the same time the Pakistani team made a comeback against England in the Rawalpindi Test and gained the lead over it. The star of Pakistan’s comeback proved to be the batsman who scored another excellent century. This batsman is Saud Shakeel, who has also recently become the vice-captain of the team.
Similar conditions between India and Pakistan on the first day
On Thursday, October 24, on one hand, the second Test match between India and New Zealand started in Pune, while on the same day, the last Test of the series between Pakistan and England started at Pindi Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi. Batting first, New Zealand scored 259 runs on a spin-friendly pitch in Pune. England also scored 267 runs on the spin-friendly pitch of Pindi. In reply, by the end of the day’s play, Team India had scored 16 runs after losing one wicket, while Pakistan had scored 73 runs after losing 3 wickets. The situation of both the matches seemed to be the same but on the second day it completely changed.
Story changed on the second day, Saud scored a century
On the second day of the Pune Test, Team India collapsed for only 156 runs and New Zealand got a lead of 103 runs. Whereas in Pindi, Pakistan also lost 7 wickets for 177 runs and its condition also looked like that of Team India but this is where the big difference came. While no batsman could play with responsibility for Team India, for Pakistan its vice-captain Saud Shakeel took the lead. This left-handed batsman made his debut in December 2022 and has been scoring runs continuously since then.
Shakeel did the same thing this time too and scored a memorable century and took the Pakistani team out of a difficult situation and gave them the lead. This is the fourth century of Shakeel’s Test career and second century of this year. Before this, he had also scored a century against Bangladesh in August.
Gave lead to the team
On the basis of this century of Shakeel, Pakistani team crossed the score of England. Shakeel also got help from the lower order here. Both spinners, Noman Ali and Sajid Khan, who took England’s wickets with their bowling in the Multan and Pindi Tests, also contributed with the bat. Noman played an excellent inning of 45 runs and made a strong partnership of 88 runs with Saud. Sajid, who came after this, also counter-attacked and made a half-century partnership with Saud, taking the Pakistani team to 344 runs, which gave Pakistan a lead of 77 runs over England.
