Yasir Shah’s smiling but volatile brilliance can tilt Test series in Pakistan’s favour

The mercurial talent of Pakistan’s veteran spinner has been summed up by his two Test series in England

Yasir Shah might have thought his passport was about to be confiscated at Adelaide last November. He had just coughed up 197 runs at worse than a run a ball to David Warner and co. as Australia went medieval on his spin for seemingly the umpteenth time in their own surrounds. The week before, he gave up another 200 to them at the Gabba, as he had at Melbourne the previous time they toured. The story was written: devastating in an Emirati dustbowl, damaged goods elsewhere.

But you wouldn’t have known it by looking at his face nor watching the unburdened way he batted, clouting the nastiest bowling attack going around for a maiden professional century. With everything going wrong in his principal discipline, and for his team, here was Yasir still finding a way to play with the same freedom that defined his debut in Dubai five years earlier, then ripping joyous leg breaks and celebrating like a man who had won the lottery.

When Yasir’s career is reviewed, it’ll require explanation. Right now, his 221 Test wickets at 30.2 looks altogether very good – the great bowlers seldom have a ‘3’ in front of their average. But when throwing in that he’s only played 40 Tests – by which, at the same time, he has 34 more scalps than Shane Warne did – he looks an all-timer. Indeed, the 34-year-old didn’t just reach 200 Test wickets faster than anyone, to that mark in 33 Tests, he smashed it like Usain Bolt did the 100 metres record, there three matches faster than Clarrie Grimmett – a record that lasted for eight decades.

Both this volatility and Yasir’s endlessly positive attitude has been neatly summed up across his two visits to England. Going back to his first Test in the country in 2016, he finished that week the number one ranked bowler on the planet after a majestic 10/141. It was a phenomenal performance, the defining contribution in one of the best Tests this century. But in the second, he returned match figures of 1/266, dismembered by Joe Root at Manchester. It got little better at Edgbaston, again going for well over 200. But who won the match and levelled the series for Pakistan at The Oval, taking them to the top of the world rankings? Our man, with 5/71.

Last week, back at the Old Trafford ground where his story took a turn for the worse four years ago, he might have gone to bed last Thursday worrying that it was happening again. Yes, he had Root’s wicket, but he couldn’t have bowled much worse before the close. Yet he woke up on the Friday to race through England’s middle order, finishing with 4/66. On Saturday, he made quick runs before duping Dom Sibley then Ben Stokes. Plainly, the game his to take, on a wicket he would describe to the England batsman as turning more than the UAE beauties where he took 117 of those first 200. Only Jos Buttler could then reverse him out of the vicious rough so expertly. Fast forward three hours and Pakistan lose with fingers pointed at the defensive fields he was set. All Yasir could do is smile and congratulate England. He doesn’t know any other way.

Yasir Shah reacts during the first Test between England and Pakistan (Reuters)

The difference this time is that with eight wickets to his name by the time the dust settled last weekend, he is very much in this series as it moves to Southampton, a surface that spun big during a comparable heatwave two summers ago when England hosted India. While every column inch before the opener was devoted to the trio of quicks leading the attack – indeed, who the pitches in Pakistan are tailor-made for, seeing Yasir dropped when they returned home last year – the veteran is still standing and is as likely as anyone to turn it on.

“He’s a match-winner,” Waqar Younis, an assistant coach with Pakistan on this trip, said when asked about Yasir’s ability to keep bouncing back. “We are very lucky to have him. He has won Pakistan heaps of games in the past and his record really speaks for itself. Unfortunately, he couldn’t really finish the game. That pitch was tailor-made for him and he picked up eight wickets. He could have rolled England over but that is the way cricket goes.”

That it does. And perhaps that’s the secret: appreciating this strange game cannot always break your way. Indeed, as any psychologist worth their fee will tell you during your first trip to the daybed, there’s nothing you can do about the past; the only moment you can truly control is the one you are living in. Yasir understands this: cricket has been both good to him and bad to him but he’s still there turning it square with a smile. We should all be so lucky.