A brilliant Test match was won by a catch to match at 10 minutes past six on a sunlit Manchester evening yesterday when Imran Nazir, a Pakistan substitute fielder, flung himself away to his right at backward point and plucked one-handed from the air Darren Gough's ambitious sliced cover drive. There were 37 balls of the match remaining. All out for 261, England had conceded by 108 runs a match that when play began they had nurtured realistic hopes of winning.
At 196 for two at tea, with the target of 370 out of range but with Marcus Trescothick already having completed his second Test century, they needed to survive 32 more overs to draw the match and win their fifth consecutive series. It should have been a formality.
The second new ball, available immediately after the interval held the key, though. After Trescothick had hammered Wasim Akram's first ball with it to the square boundary, the Pakistan captain Waqar Younis, from the other end, produced an inswinger that sent Graham Thorpe's off stump cartwheeling. Eight wickets were lost during the final session for 60 runs in one ball fewer than 22 overs. Four - Alec Stewart, Nick Knight, and Ian Ward among them - came in the space of 13 balls leaving the way open to the tail.
Dominic Cork and Gough survived for almost an hour before Cork was out. The end came swiftly after that. It had been a triumph for the Pakistan bowlers. From the City End, Saqlain Mushtaq sent down all but the three overs Waqar bowled with the second new ball and 47 in all. After 40 he had not taken a wicket. By the time he had finished he had snared four, taken in a 36-ball spell for just five runs. Do not forget Waqar, though, who removed Mike Atherton thrillingly after Trescothick and he had taken their opening partnership to 146, and fittingly, took the final wicket as well as that of Thorpe: nor Wasim, who found a massive lifter to dispose of Trescothick and dispensed with the unfortunate Knight first ball.
Knight can count himself unlucky, not just because the ball with which he was deemed leg before would have passed over the top of the stumps but because Wasim had overstepped the crease by a good six inches without Eddie Nichols spotting it.
That, regrettably was not the end of the controversy. In the following over Ward was caught, with David Shepherd failing to spot a similar transgression by Saqlain, and similarly the offspinner was over the line when dismissing Cork. There is no doubt that Saqlain was overstepping regularly in between times without the umpires spotting it. With television highlighting it all, the third umpire, Ray Julien should have alerted his colleagues.
There had been earlier controversy when, midway through the afternoon, with Pakistan searching for only their second wicket of the day, Trescothick, having just completed his century, edged Saqlain via his pad to short leg, only for Shepherd to rule in the batsman's favour. There is no doubt that England lost their way, for Atherton and Trescothick had provided a mission statement in adding 85 from 22 overs on the fourth evening. Before play, they must have entertained ideas of a win. Instead, they managed just 64 runs in the first session, during which Atherton was bowled neck and crop by Waqar's brilliant inswinger for 51 and only 47 in the second, with Michael Vaughan dismissed by Abdur Razzaq.
The innings was stifled, principally by Saqlain's decision to go over the wicket to the left-handed Trescothick and bowl into the rough outside his leg stump. It made for unedifying cricket but the batsman had little option but to use his pad. The wicket of the talismanic Thorpe, followed immediately by that of Trescothick for 117 after six hours, gave Pakistan renewed heart. Stewart played pleasantly for 53 minutes, before shouldering arms to a perfectly straight ball from Saqlain and was lbw, and then, from the last two balls of his following over, the offspinner had Ward caught at the wicket and Caddick bowled first ball. In between Knight's agonising return to Tests continued.
