The Boy Who Turned Edgbaston Into a Funfair

If you had told the average Pakistan cricket supporter at the start of this series that their side would spend the third evening of the final Test at Edgbaston looking like they were auditioning for a highlight reel rather than limping towards another three-day defeat, they would have checked your temperature and possibly your passport. 

Yet here we are. A 21-year-old from Mardan with the name Razaullah, barely enough first-class matches to fill a short film, and the sort of carefree swagger usually reserved for street cricket or late-night WhatsApp groups, has just forced England to chase 130 on the fourth day. And he did it while batting at number nine, smashing nine sixes, and looking for all the world as if the concept of pressure was something that happened to other people.

Let’s be clear: this was not some carefully nurtured golden boy polished in the National Cricket Academy until he shone. This was a young fast bowler who only made his first-class debut last November, who was still sorting out passport logistics when the call came, and who arrived in England as one of the emergency reinforcements after Pakistan’s latest round of self-inflicted chaos. He took the new ball (well, the first-change ball) against Joe Root on Test debut and dismissed him with his fourth delivery. He then bowled 23 overs for 148 runs – an economy rate that would make most accountants weep – but still finished with four wickets. That alone would have been a solid debut. What followed was pure, unfiltered Pakistan.

When Razaullah walked in at 318 for 8, still two runs behind, the sensible money was on England wrapping this up before the tea interval and booking their flights home. Instead, the young man decided the situation called for something closer to carnival cricket. He clubbed a 43-ball fifty, the fastest by a Pakistan debutant, and kept going until he had 81 off 63 balls. Nine sixes. Nine. He equalled Tim Southee’s record for a Test debutant and matched Ben Stokes’ mark for the most maximums in a Test innings in England. He shared a 121-run stand with Mohammad Abbas that felt less like a ninth-wicket partnership and more like two mates who had found the key to the drinks cabinet and refused to hand it back.

Cruel Humour

The humour in all this is almost cruel. England, the inventors of Bazball, suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of something that looked suspiciously like Razball. Joe Root stood in the middle with the expression of a man who has just discovered his carefully laid plans have been eaten by a particularly enthusiastic goat. Fielders were scattered to the boundary like confetti. Gus Atkinson was asked to bowl bouncers with eight men on the fence. Archer got smoked for successive straight sixes. At one point Root even left the field to consult the brains trust, which is cricket’s equivalent of calling tech support while your laptop is on fire. None of it worked. Razaullah just kept swinging as if the only instruction he had received was “have fun and try not to get stumped too early.”

He did get stumped eventually, of course – going for a tenth six off Dan Lawrence on the final ball of the day – but by then the damage was done. Pakistan had posted 449. England needed 130. A match that had looked dead was suddenly alive, and a series that had been an exercise in collective misery suddenly had a hero.

New Akram

Pakistan cricket has spent years searching for the next Wasim, the next Waqar, the next Shoaib. What it has often got instead is a conveyor belt of almosts and what-might-have-beens, chewed up by the system before they could properly grow. Razaullah arrived with almost no baggage and left Edgbaston with a standing ovation and a nation briefly remembering what pure, reckless talent looks like. That is rare. That is valuable. That is worth protecting.

He is still raw. The 148 runs conceded will not be forgotten by the statisticians. The technique will need work. The body will need managing. But for two glorious hours on a September evening in Birmingham, a 21-year-old number nine turned a Test match into a celebration and reminded everyone watching that cricket, at its best, is supposed to be fun. Pakistan should bottle that feeling, keep the boy close, and give him the space to become the champion he already looks capable of being. Because if they don’t, someone else will, and the next time he clears the ropes it might not be wearing green.

(The writer is a senior journalist.)