Sajid Khan is a player who demands attention, a character whose moustache, however eyecatching, is not half as flamboyant as his celebrations. As England’s innings imploded across a dramatic afternoon, and an old, tired pitch that had held firm across nearly seven days of Test cricket finally started to surrender, there were quite a few of those.
He is a man who could hardly be more theatrical if he donned a scarlet bowler hat and started twirling a cane, and here he found a stage. The tourists looked on course to comfortably match Pakistan’s first-innings total of 366 until, as the day drew towards a close and with a ball showing the first signs of old age, the spinners found some turn and course of the game took a twist. At stumps England were six down and still 127 behind.
“We kind of knew what the pitch was going to do,” said Ben Duckett. “If we’d batted on that yesterday and there was only one seamer and it wasn’t spinning a great deal, things would have been very different. It’s only going to get harder, I think.
“We’re in a position now where tomorrow morning’s massive. We need to try to win that first session, then we’ll be in a good position in the game. I’d be very surprised if it didn’t just continue to spin more and more. Certainly that fourth innings is going to be a bit tricky.”
For a while this one did not seem to be. After 41 overs England stood at 210 for two; four overs later it was 225 for six and their ambitions had dipped as rapidly and colourfully as the sun. Across the first two games of this series England had scored 1,034 runs for nine wickets in 191 overs; suddenly they lost four for 14 in 18 balls.
Joe Root was the first to fall and the most unfortunate, the ball diverting into the stumps off an edge and a foot. Duckett, having scored 114 off 129, tried to drive the same bowler and edged to Salman Agha at slip, and five balls later Sajid got one to turn sharply past Harry Brook’s bat and into middle and leg. Two balls after that Ben Stokes edged Noman Ali into a pad and the ball looped wide of Abdullah Shafique at short leg, who dived to take a smart catch. From there Jamie Smith and Brydon Carse survived the last eight overs under intense pressure.
None of that looked likely as Duckett raised his bat a little earlier, even if it was a demonstration of the bowlers’ rising control that it took him 22 balls, and the best part of nine nervy overs, to navigate through the 90s. Still, his century was the eighth fastest scored by an England opener.
Perth will host the opening Test match of an Ashes series for the first time next year, the first time in four decades that the opening Test will not be played in Brisbane. The 2025-26 series opener will be held at Optus Stadium from 21 November.
The first Test will be followed by a day-night Brisbane Test from 4 December and the Christmas Test at Adelaide Oval from 17 December, with Melbourne’s Boxing Day Test from 26 December and Sydney’s new year’s Test from 4 January in their traditional timeslots.
It marks a significant shake-up in scheduling for Cricket Australia. South Australia, which has long been home to the day-night Test, has been upgraded to a primetime holiday slot. PA Media
Duckett started England’s innings, surprisingly, with a leave, and then continued it, less surprisingly, with a succession of orthodox and reverse sweeps. These, of course, are his speciality, and this was their moment. With him in control England set off at a sprint, scoring 69 across their first 10 overs, all but one of which featured at least a single boundary.
Zak Crawley’s time in the middle was shorter and more dramatic, and he required a thick edge of luck to reach 27. He was on 20 and at the non-striker’s end when he launched himself down the wicket for what he alone thought was a likely single off Sajid, and was nowhere near his crease when the ball was returned to the bowler. But Sajid had allowed his left arm to brush the stumps and dislodge the bails as he prepared to gather it, surrendering a certain run-out and giving himself a chance to show that he can emote desolation almost as well as joy.
Two overs later Crawley had to be called back by Duckett to review an lbw decision which was duly overturned, but he scored only three more runs before another review discovered an edge and ended his innings.
England’s pace of scoring slowed after his departure, and when Noman Ali bowled a maiden to Root in the first hour of the final session it was Pakistan’s first in 171 attempts across the two games. By then Ollie Pope had been and gone, the 26-year-old looking comfortable until he suddenly wasn’t, and Sajid spun one past the bat and into the stumps.
From the start the day had, in more ways than one, an unusual, disconcerting air, the action filtered for much of the time through a thick, creamy haze of smog that never quite lifted even as the state of the game gradually became clearer.
Pakistan’s last five wickets added 107 to their overnight score, two of them falling to the excellent Brydon Carse. He took two for just 15 runs in his first 13 overs of the innings, and ended as England’s most economical bowler even though Aamer Jamal and Salman Agha besmirched his figures by taking 16 off his 16th.
He exacted a measure of revenge by extracting the former’s middle stump with the first ball after lunch to leave Pakistan nine down, and the final wicket fell six overs later, Noman pulling a Jack Leach delivery to deep midwicket where Carse, appropriately, was underneath it. Now England need him also to excel with the bat.
