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The Joy of Six – Australian tours of Pakistan

From dubious umpiring to raging turners to Mark Taylor’s 334 not out, look back on Australia’s cricket tours of Pakistan

1. The ‘other’ Pakistan

I can only speak for myself here, but when I was young and learning to love cricket, I appreciated on some subconscious level that there was two distinct types of Pakistan team. The first was the one that regularly toured Australian shores (oh for those days again); the one which always brimmed with an intoxicating blend of sublimely skilled superstars, mercurial and frustrating talents, mystery spinners who may or may not have been north of 40 years old (despite the protestations of the tour guide that they were in fact 28) and then at the other end of the spectrum, often a 17-year-old who looked at least 25.

Their birthdates were even more flexible than the wrists of the spinners, we spelled their names wrong or else pronounced them incorrectly and marveled that the earth contained so many people with at least two Qs in their name. These Pakistan teams that we saw with our own eyes or on Channel 9’s telecasts were easy to fall in love with for they were loaded with unconventional talent and an abundance of memorable characters like Imran, Sarfraz, Qasim, Ijaz, Wasim, Waqar, Saeed, plus all those Mushtaqs and Mohammads. And Mushtaq Mohammad.

The other type of Pakistan team was the one Australia faced on foreign soil in games that would never be broadcast in Australia. Though mostly made up of the same players, we didn’t truly know this team because we didn’t see it. We heard about it, we read about it and we gossiped about it, but we didn’t know it.

Pakistan ‘away’ took on different, usually cartoonishly devious character traits. Player autobiographies, the parochial Australian press and perhaps most evocatively, the good old-fashioned grapevine, told us that on their home soil Pakistan were sly, deceptive and in some cases downright dodgy. We couldn’t see their umpire in action but hey, look at the LBWs on that scorecard, they must be on the take.

Fortunately for the sake of international relations, the birth of satellite TV brought with it a glorious and previously untapped stream of overseas cricket, one that coincided with the introduction of neutral umpires in the Test arena. Personally I wouldn’t have minded seeing umpire Mahboob Shah’s interpretations of delirious Australian appeals against Javed Miandad, but the fact that we never did and never will (even home broadcasts in Pakistan often eschewed replays of calls that looked even slightly contentious) adds a veneer of dark romance to those long-gone Tests in Karachi and Lahore and Faisalabad.

It’s safe to say that Australia’s record in Test tours to Pakistan (and it’s okay to hold out hope that one day the two teams will meet there again) is roughly what you’d expect given the proliferation of conspiracy theories: diabolical. The reality of that record is something far less interesting than the myths; Australia has just never been much chop on turning sub-continental wickets against any kind of spin.

Save for the 1998 tour, broadcast on Foxtel most fortuitously given Mark Taylor’s landmark, Bradman-nudging triple century (it was also Australia’s last Test trip to Pakistan itself), most of the “away” Tests we’ve seen on TV between the two sides have been on neutral territory like Sharjah, Dubai, various venues across the UK and even Sri Lanka. It really is one of the great shames of the past two decades of cricket.

Most of what follows are moments that Australian cricket lovers never saw with their own eyes, so we can only imagine them, read about them and listen to the war stories of those who performed them. In the case of the handful that were beamed down into our living rooms, we have morsels from which to ponder what we’ve been missing out on ever since.

2. 1980 – Border’s twin towers

If not the flickering flames of hell that India’s been for Australian touring sides of the post-war era, Pakistan has nevertheless presented itself as a kind of purgatory in which the odd smattering of individual success is the best that touring sides could hope for.

It was something of a reoccurring theme in Australian Test tours to Pakistan that a calamitous 1 st Test defeat on a raging turner would be followed by interminable bat-athons in the next two encounters, meaning Pakistan always seemed to take the series 1-0. The 1980 tour followed this template to the letter, with a hellish first-up pitch in Karachi providing a cakewalk for the home side. That pitch took so much turn that even the sturdy but unspectacular Australian spin pairing of Ray Bright and Greg Chappell combined for all 13 of the Pakistan’s wickets to fall.

Familiar tropes were everywhere, most noticeably that of the beaten-down and broken Australian paceman. At Karachi Australia’s new ball pairing of Dennis Lillee and Geoff Dymock went wicketless. Lillee’s tour was probably the worst of his career and produced just three wickets at cost of over 100 each.

Pakistan fulfilled their end of the cliché bargain with the selection of a mystery spinner when team manager Mushtaq Mohammad spotted 5’5” Tauseef Ahmed bowling in the nets in the lead-up to the Test and picked him on the strength of a whim and with only one first-class match to his name. Tauseef teamed up with Iqbal Qasim for 18 wickets for the match, slicing through Australia’s household names with ease. By the end the Australians might have preferred to have only had to withstand the hail of oranges that rained down on them from the stands.

The two drawn Test were damp squibs in comparison. The rain-affected draw in Faisalabad is worth mentioning only for double hundreds to both Greg Chappell and Taslim Arif and the statistical curio of Chappell deploying himself and all ten of his teammates as bowlers when Pakistan labored to 382 for 2 from 126 overs. Chappell himself took the wicketkeeping gloves from Marsh, allowing the latter to bowl ten wicketless overs. Sadly we’re likely never to be able to relive them.

Faisalabad contained one of Australian cricket’s greatest and most underappreciated solos, though, when 24-year-old Allan Border blasted two scores in excess of 150 in the rain-shortened stalemate. His second-innings 153 came from 184 balls, including 16 fours and 5 sixes. Perhaps it’s diminished slightly on account of the compliant pitch, but further novelty points are accrued for the fact that when he finally departed, Border was stumped in comedic style by temporary ‘keeper Javed Miandad. Australia had batted and batted and batted again, but by series’ end they came away with nothing. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Bonus: some grainy black and white footage does remain of Imran’s sprightly 56 in the first innings.

3. 1982 – Kim’s Calamity

Of all the short straws Kim Hughes drew in his career in the baggy green, none came with such spirit-sapping consequences as his appointment as skipper of Australia’s 1982 Pakistan tour, a six-week trip that regular captain Greg Chappell had given a wide berth for the sake of family and business interests. Hughes was without Dennis Lillee and Len Pascoe (both also withdrew) and Australia didn’t just lose the Tests 3-0, they and their stand-in skipper were comprehensively trounced. Losing being the habit it is, they didn’t win a single tour match either, only the second time for the century that Australia had been whitewashed on a Test tour.

The agitated tourists fought with their opposition, they fought with umpires (spoiler alert: this happens a bit from here) and also amongst themselves. At one stage Hughes had to intervene when umpire Mahboob Shah refused to return the cap of Geoff Lawson at the end of an over on account of an earlier outburst from the bowler. “I am as frustrated as I am disappointed,” said a resigned Hughes at one point. Not long into the tour he was under attack from all angles and not just behind closed doors; the trip coincided with an infamous and very public attack on Hughes’s leadership credentials by captaincy rival Rod Marsh in an interview with Playboy magazine.

Australia’s obstacles were classic Pakistan tour fare: stifling heat, stomach bugs and illnesses spreading through the ranks, dropped catches (nine in the first innings of the Karachi Test, no less, which led Hughes to conclude that he helmed the worst fielding side in world cricket), crowd projectiles (“people don’t deserve to see international cricket when they behave like this,” said Hughes after the abandonment of one of the one-day internationals), perceived umpiring slights and the one-man wrecking ball that was Abdul Qadir conspired to strangle the life out of Australia’s resistance.

For those playing at home, this tour also featured one of the more maddening, reoccuring though so far unheeded lessons of touring Pakistan: it’s probably not the best trip on which to embark after a six-month lay-off from Test action. Ringing any bells?

Another: the tendency of Australia’s spinners to look pedestrian on pitches their Pakistani counterparts had made to look like minefields. Intikhab Alam might well have spoke for generations of Australian fans when he noted the simplest and clearest gulf between the two sides in ‘82. “The trouble with your spinners is that they do not spin the ball.” The man probably had a point.

The Cricketer called it “Australia’s public flogging”. Wisden Cricket Monthly went with, “Aussies and a load of rubbish”. Others just left it at, “a massacre”. Other than Greg Ritchie’s undefeated century in Faisalabad, said Abdul Haye of the Pakistan Times, Australia were “gutless”. Mike Coward was no kinder, noting that the tourists had “neither the mental toughness nor the techniques to succeed here”.

Hughes might have been thrown to the wolves in all respects, but his appraisal of his side’s demise at the hands of Abdul Qadir and his spin wizardry also spoke volumes of Australia’s long-held ability to delude itself when sifting through the wreckage of these types of tours. “The difference between the two sides,” he said, “was a leg-spinner called Abdul Qadir, who brought some magic to the series.” By Hughes’s reckoning it was merely a case of Australia “play[ing] bad enough to lose”. The image of Aussie paceman Jeff Thomson kicking down the stumps in frustration at Lahore probably provided a far more fitting punctuation mark for a shambolic tour.

4. 1988 – Sour grapes and soured relations

If you wanted to draw upon a tour that typified every negative cliché about touring Pakistan, Australia’s ill-starred 1988 trip would be the one.

The script was classic if a little predictable: pre-tour swagger giving way to endless pratfalls in the face of the local spinners, but Australia’s internal struggles were well and truly drowned out by the allegations of home-town umpiring and pitch-doctoring that threw the entire tour into doubt. Again the Australian fielding was atrocious (we’ve long given Pakistan stick for this but a revision is probably due of Australia’s obscene dropped catch numbers in Pakistan away Tests). Thirteen drops in the first two Tests finished off what the batting collapses started.

It’s worth noting that the resumption of animosity between the Aussies and umpire Mahboob Shah was, along with the travails of Gatting’s England a year earlier , the kind of stain on the game’s image that heavily contributed to the introduction of neutral umpires. Still, it was no laughing matter when Border threatened to pack up his kit and take his men home in the wake of the first Test. After that game Australian team manager Col Egar, national coach Bob Simpson and Border each directly accused Shah of gross incompetence and the Karachi groundsman of tampering with the pitch.

Pakistan won by an innings and 188 runs in that opener on the back of Javed Miandad’s 211 before shutting up shop for the remaining rubbers. “Miandad played very well in between six or seven opportunities to get him out,” hissed a short-tempered Border.

The Aussie captain was actually a sound-bite machine on that trip. Here are some selected highlights:

• “No matter what is said, people will say it’s sour grapes. But ultimately, someone has to take a stand [over Pakistan] cricket because it has been going on for too long. If we are the ones to cop it then so be it.”
• After the first Test in Karachi: “The wicket was ridiculous and the decisions given against us were atrocious. We were never in with a chance. There is a conspiracy and we will not be able to win.”

So far, so diplomatic.

The visiting Australian press poured fuel on the fire, pointing to the fact that Pakistan batting hero Javed Miandad had only been adjudged LBW on four occasions in 63 Test innings at home, while away from Pakistan that number swelled to 20 from 81 innings. Former Test spinner Ashley Mallett went a step further still, arguing that Border’s men should have been “spared the indignity” of touring Pakistan at all. “On the Test stage Australians don’t whinge without a damned good reason,” he added, lest there be any doubt.

Pakistan’s reaction was equally acidic and did little to diffuse the situation. “Mahboob Shah is our best umpire, which they themselves have recognised during the final of the World Cup,” bristled BCCP secretary Arif Abbasi, “and now since they have lost the Test because of poor fielding and bad batting they are accusing the umpires. We will have none of this.”

Before the series had started, and eventually lost amid all of the controversy, was an equally unflattering look for Pakistan cricket when superstar captain Imran Khan basically took one look at the weather forecast and hit the snooze button, bypassing the Australian visit altogether. Miandad felt he could handle the heat and was temporarily handed the captaincy.

From an Australian perspective, that wretched trip is also notable for the introduction of future golden gloveman Ian Healy, who struggled so badly in dropping three catches that one Australian reporter noted, “his [debut] Test would have made lesser men burn their gloves”. Less fortunate was batsman Jamie Siddons, who missed a debut when he succumbed to illness (debilitating gastro that came after he made the diabolical decision to ice his warm beer in Quetta) and missed his only chance at the highest level.

Australia, too, would have to live with the disappointment of another frustrating series loss.

5. 1994 – the Karachi Heartbreaker and Flem’s debut hat-trick

For so long Australia had relied upon its skipper and batting bulwark Allan Border to deliver success, but Border’s international retirement at the conclusion of the 1994 trip to South Africa meant a changing of the guard in Australian ranks as Mark Taylor took the helm for the Pakistan tour of the same year. Much of the pre-tour focus fell on new skipper Taylor but it would be one of his trusted lieutenants who’d have the greatest say in the series result.

“Great cricketers are like banyan trees,” said former Pakistan veteran Majid Khan of the departed Border, “for those who relax under their comfortable shade generally get used to it. Once the tree is gone and those relaxing under it are exposed to the direct view of the sun, it takes some time to readjust.”

To start with Australia readjusted well. The traditional opening Test at Karachi could not have been much tighter but Taylor’s reign couldn’t have got off to a worse start in an individual sense: he bagged a pair and became the only Australian to do so in their first match in the top job. As fate would have it, a few extra runs might have reshaped the result of the game and series.

They didn’t know it in the moment, but if they squandered the first Test, Taylor’s men were effectively consigning themselves to series defeat because a pair of high scoring draws would follow. Karachi was where Australian hearts were broken though, and broken when victory had been in sight. Closing in on a first Australian Test win in Pakistan in some 35 years, with one wicket left to take and three runs to play with, eight-wicket hero Shane Warne enticed Inzamam ul-Haq forward for what looked like a game-winning stumping before the ball spat viciously out of the rough, straight past the hovering gloves of ‘keeper Ian Healy and raced away to the boundary for four byes.

Pakistan had snuck home by a wicket in a minor classic, and the same brutal surface that had welcomed fumbling debutant Healy six years earlier had again haunted the now-hardened veteran again.

For all that heartbreak, there was also the odd bright spot. Victorian swing bowler Damien Fleming broke through for a hat-trick on debut in Rawalpindi, one that included the wicket of double-centurion and recently scandalised Pakistan captain Salim Malik.

6. 1998 – Taylor goes Bradmanesque

Before the twilight years of Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting were upon us, it’s hard to remember a Test captain who was so maligned and subject to such endless speculation and examination as Mark Taylor in the year leading up to his magnum opus at Peshawar. Taylor’s undefeated 334, equal with Bradman in a numerical sense but entirely distinctive in its compilation, might now also be seen as the innings that sold a million air conditioners. It also went part of the way to securing a rare Australian series victory in the last series between the two sides in Pakistan.

Maybe it’s a little unfair to condense 938 minutes of batting nirvana (remember he added 92 more in the second innings) into 15 minutes of highlights, but sit back and enjoy.

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Pakistan tour of Australia, 2019

USA defeat Pakistan in a super over at T20 World Cup after Aaron Jones heroics

Sport USA defeat Pakistan in a super over at T20 World Cup after Aaron Jones heroics

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the sporting shocks.

In a Dallas suburb that had never staged a cricket match until last year, debutants the United States have humbled 2022 finalists Pakistan in a result that set the T20 World Cup alight.

The co-hosts matched Pakistan's 159 in the regulation 20 overs, thanks to a last-ball boundary, then scored 19 in the super over.

The 2022 finalists could only score 13 in their over and now go into their next match, against historic rivals India in New York on Sunday, under huge pressure.

The USA's next match is also against India, on Wednesday in New York. Having already beaten Canada they will be eyeing qualification for the Super 8 stage..

Put in to bat, Pakistan ground their way to 7-159 at the Grand Prairie Cricket Stadium, never really threatening to make a big score. Babar Azam top scored with 44 in 43 balls, while Shadab Khan added 40 in 25.

For the Americans Shaurabh Netravalkar — an engineer when he's not playing cricket in a World Cup — bowled tightly to take 2-18 off his four overs including a stunning catch at slip from Steven Taylor to dismiss Muhammad Rizwan, and Nosthush Kenjige took 3-30.

The USA began well, and looked to be romping to victory at 1-104 after 13 overs. Then Andries Gous (35 off 26) and Monank Patel (50 off 38) were dismissed in successive overs.

It came down to 12 off three balls, bowled by Haris Rauf. Aaron Jones smacked a full toss for six, a single followed, then Nitish Kumar drove another full toss for four.

Pakistan's super over, bowled by Mohammad Amir, was a mess. He bowled three wides which, with scrambled singles and overthrows, cost seven runs.

Netravalkar bowled America's super over. He conceded no wides and the home side's fine fielding was highlighted when Iftikhar Ahmed was brilliantly caught by long-on diving forward.

"It's a huge achievement. For us to beat Pakistan, we are playing them for the first time, I am just so proud of how we played," USA captain Patel said.

"It was a proper team effort from first ball until the last. Winning the toss, we knew we had to make sure we utilised conditions and credit to our bowlers for doing that.

"We knew that 160 was chaseable on this pitch. I am pleased with my innings, happy to contribute but mostly happy to win as a team. As a player you want to show up for the big occasions and I am delighted to contribute to a winning cause."

Skipper Azam said his team was lacking with the ball.

"We weren't up to it in the first six overs with the ball as usual, not taking wickets again," he said.

"And then our spinners are not taking wickets in the middle either. But it's early in the tournament, we will come back from this.

"Yes, our task ahead is hard. But credit to USA, they performed so well today. They were better than us in all aspects of the game."

Earlier, the International Cricket Council (ICC) admitted the pitches being used in New York have not been up to standard and ground staff are working on remedying them.

The temporary Long Island venue has hosted two games so far, both of which were low-scoring encounters due to the nature of the drop-in pitch which has made batting extremely difficult due to the movement and bounce.

Sri Lanka were bowled out for 77 — their lowest score — against South Africa while India bowled out Ireland for 96.

"T20 Inc and the ICC recognise that the pitches used so far at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium have not played as consistently as we would have all wanted," the ICC said.

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