Marcus Trescothick described Pakistan’s late-innings onslaught as a “perfect storm”, after the 21-year-old debutant Razaullah and the 36-year-old Mohammad Abbas combined to score 121 off 123 balls and force a fraying England to come in on the fourth day to chase a target of 130. The interim coach refused to characterise England’s frequently puzzling efforts in the field as embarrassing as Razaullah plundered nine sixes and four fours on his way to a score of 81, and Abbas two sixes – as many as he had scored in 46 career Test innings before the start of this series – in his 42, insisting: “You’ve got to give a bit more credit to them [rather] than trying to target everything that we’ve tried to do.” Trescothick added: “You’d always like to think that you can do it better, and you analyse it afterwards and say, was there an error, or was there a tactic we missed? You want to see young players coming through into the game with a bit of something about them and he’s got pace, he’s on it in the field, and then he slogs it like that.
Fair play, some of the sixes he hit were pretty impressive to watch.” Razaullah has one previous century to his name, scored last year in his third first-class game – with precisely the same number of runs from boundaries there as here, 70, though with only five sixes – and considers himself an all-rounder. Pakistan now have an outside chance of ending a chaotic tour with an unlikely victory. We have got one more chance and anything is possible.”
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