Unshackled Shakeel switches seamlessly between slow-burn and turbo

Some days, you get to be on the ground floor of something special.

Before this game, Saud Shakeel had a Test average of 72.50, seven fifty-plus scores in 10 innings, and a reputation for being a little old-school. His Test strike rate was 41.66.

In balls-to-the-wall 2023, this reads like a stat out of the Triassic. An object of curiosity.

"Wow, really? How do batters striking in the low 40s even keep themselves awake?"

"Do we know much about how they operated?"

"Amazing to think that modern batters evolved out of guys just like this one. Incredible."

If Shakeel has not moved the needle a lot outside of Pakistan, though, that's not really his fault. In Multan, in December last year, there was a defiant 94 off 213 in the second innings. But England won that game, narrowly, after Shakeel was out, though not without controversy.

He made 125 not out off 341 (you read that right) against New Zealand in January, before following up with a 32 off 146 in the second innings. But because fellow Karachiwallah Sarfraz Ahmed hit a second-dig century to seal an excellent comeback series in his hometown, the Shakeel slow-burns were lost in the grand narrative.

Innings with strike rates like 36.65 and 21.91 kinda have a habit of getting lost.

In Galle, he arrived with the score on 67 for 3, and soon worsened to 101 for 5. But not long after that, Shakeel was 33 off 53, then 50 off 69, then 64 off 82. Uhhh, is this the same guy? The guy who played the innings that felt like they'd been dug up by archaeologists? Is that him slog sweeping hard and flat? Him flitting down the track, making room, blasting the left-arm spinner over cover?

In between, he played a believable impression of the batter international cricket had previously known him to be. The defence against quicks was almost always organised, even if his stance more open than most, though not nearly as open as that of, say, Fawad Alam, who he replaced in the Pakistan batting order, and who also learned his craft in Karachi, but spiritually, is from outer space.

Against spin, Shakeel was judicious. Moving forward quickly when the bowlers pitched too close, sliding backwards when the length was short. And crucially, between the fours, he picked the gaps like a master.

Visually, you might say, there is not a lot to recommend his batting. But he doesn't seem the type to care. The whip through midwicket, the chop square of cover, the boring old conventional sweep to the legside sweeper - the kind where the fielder moves towards the ball because even the batters know there's only one run there - these are the Shakeel specialties.

He said as much after play on day three.

Is it because of your Karachi training that you play spin so well, he was asked.

"Usually, in first-class cricket in Karachi, we don't get many turning pitches," he said. "But my strength is I like to rotate the strike. You'll have noticed I like to take singles as regularly as possible, and I can find singles on both sides of the ground. I tried to apply that strength, First-class cricket also helps, but the way I've been brought up and learned the game actually helps me way more than any first-class cricket I might have played.

Essentially: You don't get to fit me into boxes you use to make sense of the world. I'm an original.

It's hard not to love.

But for those of us who need the boxes, Shakeel swept exceptionally well, and scrapped when the scrapping needed to be done, which are both understood to be Karachibatting things. Most predictably of all, he stepped happily back into the defensive version of himself when he ran out of batting partners and had only the tail to work with.

At one stage in his innings - in the company of Agha Salman - Shakeel made 83 off 88 deliveries. After Salman was out, slow-burn Shakeel returned, blocking out the first few balls of every over, turning down the singles on offer, pouncing on only the bad deliveries. His batting partners played bravely at the other end. The journey from 100 to 200, took 223 deliveries.

Oh, okay. So it is him. There's our guy.

We don't know if Shakeel will be the next great Pakisan batter, because we don't make predictions here. We only make observations.

Observations such as his having arrived at the crease during an incredibly difficult period, his having adopted a batting tactic that he's never tried at Test level before, and his having marshalled the tail to spectacular effect on this occasion.

Whatever the long-view of his career becomes, even from just this innings, it might be fair to conclude that his ceiling is outrageously high. At the end of his 11th Test innings, Shakeel went back into the dressing room on 208 not out, having faced more than four balls on average of the last 44 overs.

The grand pronouncements are tempting, but in this case it is important to let the innings breathe.

Let it rest in its greatness.

Let those of us who saw it in person wonder for a little while longer whether we really were on the ground floor. Wonder how special this something might become.

Let it coalesce gently, because while for 88 balls there was the skill and nous to go in an exhilarating direction, Shakeel seems more at home in the ebb of Test cricket, rather than its flow.

More at home in its gentleness.