Younis Khan’s knock against England at Lord’s ugly but admirable

His 25 looks like a nothing score, but there was a value to it – for Pakistan and for an old man fighting old habits, writes Osman Samiuddin.

Pakistan's Younis Khan batted for 135 minutes and faced 95 balls for his innings of 25. Anthony Devlin / AP Photo

Oh it was ugly. Younis Khan has never been a conventionally pleasing batsman on the eye. But neither has he been ugly to watch – idiosyncratic sure, but not ugly.

That comes primarily from how he stretches his body to engineer shots in ways we are not used to seeing. He can sweep better than almost anyone in the game because of how far he gets to the pitch of the ball. But even his drives, square or through cover, can be seen as the natural extension of long, dangling levers and a long torso.

On Saturday, he was not idiosyncratic though. He was just ugly. Not a single ball of the 95 he faced, did he play with any certainty let alone grace. Not for a single minute of the 135 he was at the crease did he look like it was his home, or at least a place and situation he was familiar with.

Crouched so low in his stance that he was almost squatting, his every movement thereafter had to be exaggerated. That, incidentally, is a consequence of Pakistan’s place on the international calendar, where they do not often tour England or Australia.

Consider that since his last series in England, a decade ago, Younis has played in only three Test series in conditions that are not subcontinental in nature – South Africa twice and New Zealand once.

Year after year, series after series of batting on low, slow pitches, on surfaces in the UAE especially, he has gotten lower in that stance, all the better to be closer to the ball as you drive.

Also from Samiuddin: Amir makes Test return with humble bow at Lord's

For match report and reactions, click here

On faster surfaces with more bounce, problems arise. Partly they explain the strange pirouettes and flamingo leaves of Saturday, and also the first day (where he looked better). His feet looked unsure beneath him, as if unable to grasp the surface they were standing on.

Time and again his back foot slipped back and upwards. Time and again he was airborne at point of impact, which is not unusual for him but is not perhaps a workable ploy on these surfaces. It looked for all the world as if he had turned up not only at the wrong place and time, but also for the wrong sport. Instructively, the England Cricket Board’s social media account put together a package of his leaves, played to a classical music soundtrack and captioned it “The balletic Younis Khan”.

There was little balletic about in truth but there is a kernel of something in it – the innings was so ugly it actually came out the other side, nearly, and if not beautiful then became no less compelling to watch than some of his more celebrated innings.

Here, after all, was a great batsman fighting not so much what was in front of him or around him, but what was inside him. And quite often in this time of rapid batting advances, we forget that it still is a very difficult discipline in itself.

It is easier than ever before to hit boundaries, or to invent new shots and bat with imperviousness to outside forces and inner compulsions. But some days, in some circumstances, even middling a ball, or getting your feet to move in synchronicity, or setting up correctly can feel fiendishly difficult. And as you grow older as a batsman and especially if you play after long gaps, as Younis has here, inherent tics tend to get exaggerated.

But for Younis to fight through an entire session somehow, there was something admirable in it. In the bigger picture his 25 looks like a nothing score, especially not when younger men such as Asad Shafiq and Sarfraz Ahmed batted with such fluency around him and later.

But there was a value to it, for the team first because he stuck around as Shafiq played the dominant role in a 69-run stand that helped Pakistan build their lead. It also had a value in and of itself, this spectacle of an old man fighting old habits, a bulwark against the incessant chipping away at physical and mental faculties by the creep of time.

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