Mohammad Abbas marked his run-up, and trundled up to the bowling crease. He landed one on a length, as usual, and at the other end, Babar Azam defended with conviction. As Khurram Shahzad readied himself to bowl the next one, Abbas shared a word of advice. This one landed slightly shorter, and beat the outside edge. The bowlers shared a smile and a high-five. With darkening skies over Centurion, there was some Christmas cheer around after all. Abbas had slotted right back into this group.
There is no mystery, no hidden secrets with Abbas, which is what makes the last three years so mysterious. He is a team man, popular, mild-mannered, helpful to a fault. He doesn’t have the ostentatious aggression of the express quicks like Shoaib Akhtar, nor the insouciant arrogance of the not-so-expresses like Mohammad Asif. No one seems to fully know why he spent the last three years out of the side, and everyone thinks bringing him back was a great decision.
Graeme Welch, who has been Abbas’ bowling coach at Hampshire, calls him “one of the best blokes I ever met” as well as “one of the best bowlers I’ve ever seen”. At Hampshire over the past three seasons, Abbas’s consistency has been relentless, averaging 19.26 for his 180 wickets.
“I’ve got on really well with him, even to the extent I call him one of my friends now,” Welch tells ESPNcricinfo. “I can’t speak highly enough of the fella”.
Abbas wasn’t exactly ordinary before he joined up with Welch and Hampshire, either. He last played for Pakistan in Kingston in August 2021, the same place he made his debut four years earlier. In those four years, he had already packed in a stellar international career, a ten-wicket haul in Abu Dhabi against Australia, 14 in a two-Test series against England, and a sensational new-ball spell that culminated in a famous dismissal of Ben Stokes. By the time he’d played his most recent Test, he had taken 90 wickets at 23.02; the only Pakistan bowler to have taken more wickets at a superior average is Imran Khan.
“I couldn’t believe he wasn’t in the Test team,” Welch says. “Looking at the last coaching regime [in Pakistan], I think they went down [the route of] looking at pace. I spoke to Shan Masood and he’s a big fan of Mo and wanted Mo in the team.
“Mo was just, I think, waiting for the management structure to change or something like that, because obviously they went down the pace route. It’s nice to have pace but with our bowling attack we’ve got down here, it just shows accuracy just as good as anything. And if you can have a group of bowlers with a batting group not going anywhere, that’s just as good as anything. It’s testament to him as a bloke that he hasn’t lost his desire, he didn’t lose his will to play for Pakistan and that’s why he is taking his game to a next level by getting fitter.”
During Abbas’s absence, pacers Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi and Haris Rauf all succeeded in Test cricket to varying degrees. However, bowlers of Abbas’ mould also came and went, with Mohammad Ali, Khurram Shahzad and Mir Hamza all called up to the Test side. In terms of sheer numbers, Abbas outshines them all, taking 223 at 20.24 since his last red-ball involvement with Pakistan; no other Pakistani bowler was as prolific or as efficient at first-class level during this period.
Masood, too, believes Abbas belongs in the Test side. “I’ve been captain for a year so I can only speak for the conversations that happened during that time,” he said at a press conference on the eve of the first Test. “Abbas was someone who was my type of bowler in that if you want to build up stocks of fast bowlers, he definitely slots in there.
