As drab Test match days go, not many come close to what was served up on day three in Sylhet. Not to take anything away from Bangladesh, who were ruthlessly focused on their task, but if you were engineering a day of Test cricket to feel pointless and predictable, it wouldn’t look too different to how each side shaped up when play began.For a lot of teams, the Test would have felt evenly poised. Bangladesh held a slender lead, and batting conditions were improving. They had lost three wickets for 110, and early in the morning, saw their captain and best batter Najmul Hossain Shanto depart. Their lead was still only 161, and if any side knows that the last six wickets can fall quickly, it is Pakistan; they’ve given them away cheaply often enough in the recent past. In three innings in this series, Pakistan have lost five for 37, seven for 44, and six for 90.But what might be on a knife edge for other teams is a Test already gone for Pakistan, especially with the sheer modesty of their bowling attack. While Mohammad Abbas was never selected for his pace, Khurram Shahzad’s had already begun to dip below 125 kph; as the day wore on, he was barely hitting 120. With Hasan Ali, it’s not quite clear what the bowling plan is beyond just sending down the next delivery – and if there is one, it’s not seemed to trouble any batter. With Sajid Khan – or Noman Ali in the first Test – Pakistan have essentially put a generation of spin bowling on hold while they try and squeeze out the sap left from the bottom of the barrel of their careers. It worked as a sugar hit for a series win against England, but sugar hits are rarely a long-term strategy.
With the brittleness of Pakistan’s batting order putting even more pressure on them with every run Bangladesh scored, it wasn’t long before the game felt safe for Bangladesh, and what followed was essentially a full day spent waiting for a declaration that never came. Pakistan recycled through their bowlers, running through their third, fourth, and fifth spells and the diminishing returns that came with them. On commentary, issue was occasionally taken with a specific bowling change or fielding position, but for all the criticism directed at Shan Masood, it is hard to escape the simple fact that often, you cannot captain your way out of having a poor bowling attack that finds itself unable to take wickets.
Less than two years ago, Pakistan bought into preparing wickets suited to pace bowling at home, before the plan was quickly shelved, partially because their fast bowlers are a lot more ordinary than they liked to imagine. Since the start of 2022, Pakistan’s pacers average 37.32 per wicket; it is a worse average than all Test playing nations bar Ireland. They take 62.4 balls per wicket, with Ireland the only other team with a strike rate above 60.It feels especially jarring because it wasn’t too long ago that Pakistan believed they had chanced upon another golden generation of young pace bowlers. When Shaheen Afridi broke out, he instantly adapted to the longest format, making his Test debut at 18 and instantly became an indispensable fixture in the side, seamlessly taking over as the lead fast bowler after Mohammad Amir’s sudden Test retirement. He hit the high 140s regularly and moved both old and new balls, with the bounce he extracted posing particularly acute challenges.
Until he picked up a knee injury that the PCB ended up mismanaging shambolically in 2022, Afridi had 99 wickets at an average under 25. In the four years since, his speed, form, and interest in the format tailed off dramatically. He has played just nine Tests since then, added 27 wickets to his tally, each coming at an average exceeding 40.
Naseem Shah’s case is somewhat similar; extracting vicious movement at high pace with both new ball and old. He took five wickets in an innings in his second Test, and a hat-trick in his third, all at the age of 16. He didn’t even make his white-ball debut for another three years, but he appears lost to either the medical room or the shorter formats. He last played Test cricket in 2024, with just three Tests in the last three years. That five-wicket haul, at 16, remains his only one.
Perhaps Shahzad, who took eight wickets in Sylhet, could have been selected for the first Test, but it is clear Pakistan’s pace problems are deeper than mere selection. This long-running toothlessness is partly why it felt there was little jeopardy in Sylhet today, with Bangladesh’s comfort against what Pakistan threw at them a continuation of a long-running trend. Even the fall of a wicket or two rarely precipitates a collapse, with teams finding it easy enough to hold out against Pakistan’s bowlers right down to the depths of an innings.
By the end, even calling it a pace attack felt like the truth was being stretched to breaking point
On the first day, Pakistan reduced the hosts to 116 for 6, only to watch the lower order amass a further 162 and snatch the momentum right back. Nor was that recovery exceptional; in the last two years, the bottom four of an opposition side has averaged 27.42 against Pakistan – the highest among all Test nations.
By the end, even calling it a pace attack felt like the truth was being stretched to breaking point. Pakistan fed lethargic medium pace into the Bangladesh batting meat grinder, like second-rate bowling machines whose premium subscriptions they had allowed to lapse for good. The size of the lead was academic by that point – perhaps for any batting order, but certainly for Pakistan’s.
Tellingly, when Umar Gul, the fast bowling coach, was asked about Pakistan’s chances, the first thing he said was, “conditions are overcast. It might rain.” It seemed especially apt that calling for help from above seemed more realistic than finding solutions to the problems they face on earth.
