Abrar Ahmed conjures seven on debut but misses out on joining exclusive club

THE sight of Ollie Robinson skying a catch to mid-on is not usually a cause for great disconsolation.

However, on the opening day of the second Test in Multan, there was no greater moment of disappointment or frustration than the dismissal of the former Yorkshire pace bowler.

At the time, England were 245-7 and all seven wickets had fallen to Abrar Ahmed, a 24-year-old mystery leg-spinner.

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Abrar - or should that be Abrar-cadabra? - was on course to become only the fourth player to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings.

Abrar Ahmed of Pakistan is applauded by his team mates as he leaves the field after taking a seven-wicket haul against England in Multan. Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images.Abrar Ahmed of Pakistan is applauded by his team mates as he leaves the field after taking a seven-wicket haul against England in Multan. Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images.
Abrar Ahmed of Pakistan is applauded by his team mates as he leaves the field after taking a seven-wicket haul against England in Multan. Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images.

The fact that he was making his debut merely added to the drama.

But when Robinson got underneath a ball from Zahid Mahmood, a 34-year-old leg-spinner who debuted in the first Test in Rawalpindi, Mohammad Nawaz pouched the catch and Abrar’s dreams of a ten-fer were done. Zahid took the last two wickets too, finishing with 3-63 from 7.4 overs, Abrar returning 7-114 from 22 overs as England were bowled out for 281 in just 51.4 overs.

Thus all 10 wickets fell to wrist spin and, when Pakistan replied, Jack Leach made it 11 in the day for the slow men, James Anderson capturing the other wicket as the hosts closed on 107-2 as they sought the win that would level the three-match series.

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So, no abracadabra this time, no magic feat of bowling to take its famous place in Wisden.

Jim Laker, the Yorkshire-born off-spinner, and the first man to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings. Photo by Central Press/Getty Images.Jim Laker, the Yorkshire-born off-spinner, and the first man to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings. Photo by Central Press/Getty Images.
Jim Laker, the Yorkshire-born off-spinner, and the first man to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings. Photo by Central Press/Getty Images.

To only Jim Laker, Anil Kumble and Ajaz Patel belongs the distinction of having taken all 10 wickets in a Test innings, off-spinner Laker returning 10-53 in the second innings of the Old Trafford Ashes Test of 1956 after bagging 9-37 in the first innings to give him world record match figures of 19-90.

Laker played for Surrey but was born near Bradford, a Yorkshireman whose dry, laconic style translated effortlessly into the commentator’s chair. Like the great Richie Benaud, who was on the wrong side of the 19-90, Laker appreciated the art of silence and knew how to let the pictures speak for themselves; the contrast between some of the egocentric halfwits on air today could not be more great.

Laker never played for Yorkshire but Ajaz Patel did, the New Zealand left-arm spinner who appeared in the final two County Championship matches of the 2019 season.

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Patel, who took 10-119 last December against India in Mumbai, the city of his birth, offered no clues during his Yorkshire stint that he would be capable of such wonder; his figures were 15-0-119-1 against Kent and 20-0-112-1 against Warwickshire. Ouch.

Remarkably, after his ten-fer in Mumbai, Patel was dropped for the Kiwis’ next tour to Bangladesh because they wanted more seamers.

Kumble, the India leg-spinner, entered the record books for 10-74 against Pakistan in Delhi in 1999, and it is interesting that the three men who have achieved the 10-wicket feat in Tests were all spinners.

Abrar’s near-miss, if it can so be termed, emphasises how difficult it is for bowlers to take all 10 wickets - not just in terms of their own efforts, but the fact that those of other bowlers must be factored in. The chances of a team-mate not taking a wicket to scupper the show are vast; or it might be that a run-out interrupts the sequence.

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If I might be permitted a personal digression (yawn, yawn), I once prevented someone from taking all 10 in club cricket by actually catching the last man off another bowler. About three months later, the chap who had nine wickets to his name finally spoke to me again, but only to say: “But you never catch anything. How come you caught that?”

At least George Macaulay would have sympathised.

The great Yorkshire off-spinner of the inter-war period (1,774 first-class wickets at 17.22) was a team-mate of the even greater Hedley Verity, the left-arm spinner who twice took 10 wickets in an innings at Headingley.

After Verity had taken nine wickets en route to a world record 10 for 10 against Nottinghamshire in 1932, Macaulay stubbornly refused to bowl wide of the stumps. “If he’s good enough to get nine, let him earn the tenth. I shall get it if I can,” growled Macaulay.

Macaulay was also operating at the other end when Verity took 10-36 against Warwickshire the previous year, one great spinner somehow not interrupting the wicket-taking sequence of another great spinner not once but twice.

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It explains why there have been so few 10-wicket hauls in first-class cricket per se, and it would be remiss not to mention that one of those was achieved by Ottis Gibson, the Yorkshire head coach, who took 10-47 for Durham against Hampshire at Chester-le-Street in 2007.

That was the last time that the feat was accomplished in England.

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