Hours after Shan Masood made his Test debut against South Africa in Abu Dhabi in 2013, a couple of old-timers — fixtures in Pakistan cricket and the establishment — allowed their minds to start drifting.
He had just made a streaky but ultimately impressive 75 against the best attack in Test cricket. These old-timers, in the way that old-timers do, started talking him up as a potential future Test captain.
Three innings and two ducks later he was out of the side, let alone anywhere near being a captain.
The immediate rush to think he could be a captain though, and those old-timers were likely not the only ones to think it, reveals an old, well-established trope in Pakistan cricket. It is one that is as likely to be Masood’s boon as bane.
Masood is not the average Pakistani cricketer (not that there can ever be such a thing as an average, or typical, Pakistani cricketer). He was born in Kuwait and his father is a well-known and successful banker. He has, by comparison to most of his teammates, grown up in a life of some privilege.
His father, rather awkwardly, sits on the board of governors of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). That has led to expected snipes that he is only playing because of his father’s connections.
None of this should really matter, of course. But it is exactly those details that led those old-timers to calculate, as early as a young man’s debut Test, that he can, one day, be captain.
That debut innings was a decent one, nothing more, so those ideas were based predominantly on the evidence of his ability to speak English well, and on the vague, abhorrently elitist assumption that he had been brought up well.
Admittedly, the aura of the English-speaking Pakistani player has receded in modern times, certainly from the days when it was preferred that the captain was an Oxbridge graduate. But it has not vanished altogether.
As recently as 2010 Salman Butt was Test captain and as important a point as there not being too many alternatives was the fact that, well, he could speak English well.
The point is, this is going to hound Masood. He will rarely be looked upon as just an opening batsman – somebody, somewhere will always be thinking he can be captain; even Younis Khan’s nickname for him is “captain”.
And the thing is, as an opener for Pakistan, he hardly needs more obstacles weighing him down. That role is as fraught as they come in Pakistan, weighed down by any number of obstacles, prime among them that Pakistan does not know how to handle the role.
England feel they are in a crisis of some sort having not found an opening partner for Alastair Cook since Andrew Strauss retired. But that situation is a permanent condition for Pakistan.
Had it not been for Azhar Ali’s unfortunate and sudden return to Pakistan, Masood would not have been playing this Test. His hundred against Sri Lanka two Tests ago would not have been forgotten but it would not have mattered. It is just the way Pakistan are with openers, and his two failures in Abu Dhabi would have provided a perfect smoking gun.
So his 54 on the opening morning, though it may look less significant as this Test moves on and an opportunity lost rather than one taken, was still an important one.
Pakistan were never going to admit he would have been dropped, but Waqar Younis, their coach, spun Masood’s situation as a problem of plenty.
“Look, Shan we know he is very talented,” he said. “He’s a very fit guy, his work ethics are outstanding but he’s very young when you talk of Test cricket.
“The line-up we have is very difficult to get into that and to stay there, you have to keep performing.”
That is a little disingenuous given that he is talking about the middle order and not the opening slots. Those are as easy to break into as they always have been, it’s the staying there that is the problem.
But Waqar was happy with the manner in which he played. The firmness of his intent was the key indicator, more than the runs he scored. His dismissals had looked so wretched in the first Test that it was easy to imagine confidence seeping away.
And yet, in the first over he faced, he was pulling at Stuart Broad, not with great application but at least with commendable gusto. He was beaten a couple of times later and looked awkward on occasion to the short ball, but he looked by some distance the more in-command opener.
There was fluency throughout, a lightness that belied the heaviness of his current situation as well as a tall, gangly frame forever perched one misstep away from acute clumsiness.
An emphatic pull off Mark Wood after ducking under a swift bouncer, a dancing fleet-footed six off Moeen Ali and a cover drive to being up the half-century — this was, in retrospect, probably his most assured Test innings, more so than the Sri Lanka hundred.
The dismissal, first ball after lunch, was tame and disastrously timed, but he looked as much an opener as any recent candidate for Pakistan. Forget captaincy — they come and go in Pakistan. Openers? They could really do with one of those.
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