A first loss against Bangladesh left Pakistan with a lot to rue, and captain Shan Masood admitted his side had made "a lot of mistakes" over the Test. After four fairly attritional days where just 17 wickets fell, Bangladesh, spearheaded by spinners Shakib Al Hasan and Mehidy Hasan Miraz, rolled Pakistan over for 146, setting up a 30-run target and sealing a dramatic ten-wicket victory on the final day.
"As a team, we made a lot of mistakes over the four days and Bangladesh were worthy winners," Masood said. "They were very disciplined in their batting. We gave them a few chances as well when Mehidy and Mushfiqur [Rahim] were playing. As a bowling unit where we lost the game was the second new ball. That's where we could have imposed ourselves on the game and let ourselves down."
It was that passage of play that assistant coach Azhar Mahmood also referenced after the third day. At the 82-over mark, Bangladesh had scored 239 having lost half their side, but in the final ten overs of the day, when Pakistan took the new ball, they pounced on some errant bowling, totting up 67 runs in that passage of play to swing momentum their way.
As the pitch continued to flatten out over the third and fourth day, Bangladesh reached, and then surpassed, Pakistan's first innings total. The home side had called Mohammad Rizwan and Shaheen Shah Afridi in when they were 448 for 6, allowing Bangladesh, who batted to the last man, to take a 117-run lead. It became just the third time in Test history a side declared a first innings with six or fewer wickets down and went on to lose the game.
"If you asked me now, we would have liked another 50-100 runs," Masood said. "That would have kept us in the game. The forecast also indicated the weather would be disruptive during the game. Those were our thoughts behind the declaration as well. We only lost six wickets in the first innings. We could have easily scored 550-600 if we'd carried on batting. But we also let ourselves down with the bat today."
Masood, too, maintained the united front Pakistan have put out with respect to an all-pace attack. Despite the absence of a specialist spinner being an anomaly with respect to Pakistan's historic squad selection - only once in the past 28 years have they played an all-pace attack at home - Masood pointed to workload and the nature of the surface they expected.
"I don't want to be commenting on day five because we didn't expect the game to hold up for four or five days," Masood said. "When you play three fast bowlers in this weather that's a lot of workload on the fast bowlers. If you play a spinner, the spinner's probably bowling 30 overs." He did, however, appear to contradict himself, acknowledging later that Pakistan's belief there would be disruptive weather over the game may have prompted them to hasten their declaration. At the same time, Pakistan's part-time spinners sent down 50 overs in Bangladesh's first innings, workload that a specialist spinner may well have been able to pick up to a similar extent.
"The fast bowler was played looking at the extreme weather conditions where we could help each other share the load. Naseem and Shaheen hadn't played Test cricket for a while and Pakistan haven't played Test cricket for ten months. If we played three fast bowlers and lost one through injury, we could have been like 'why didn't we play that fourth fast bowler?'"
The all-pace attack, and the belief it would prove the quickest route to 20 wickets, though, did not pan out. Pakistan's quicks ended up bowling 117.3 overs, the second-highest collective total for a Pakistan fast bowling unit in the last two decades. Masood did bemoan the injury to Aamer Jamal, whose all-round ability may have freed up an extra position for a spin bowler. "Hindsight," as Masood said, "is always 20/20; you can always fit the spinner in, but you have to look at the full balance of the side. You need seven people that can bat properly and four frontline bowlers with a little help here or there."
He accepted Bangladesh's spinners were useful on the final day, though he believed his side should never have let the game come to that. "Even their spinners were only useful on the fifth day," he said. "We had many opportunities as a side with bat and ball to take spin out of the game as a factor. We had time to apply pressure on them when we had a 200-run lead, and half their side was out. If you look at the way we bowled the third new ball, we got their last four out very quickly because we utilised that well. That second new ball, as well as the way we didn't manage to hold our nerve with the ball cost us."
As Masood pointed out, Pakistan never took two wickets in quick succession to place real pressure on Bangladesh, and their first innings straddled three days and three new balls before Pakistan finally prised them out. He pointed to key passages of play within the innings that made a difference, while heaping praise on Bangladesh's discipline.
"At the end of the day, it was how the first two innings went that decided it all. I thought there were plenty of opportunities we could have taken, and then we could have had a little bit of a lead and we could have been the side putting pressure on Bangladesh instead of the other way round. We were slightly unlucky in certain aspects, too. Some of our players inside-edged the ball onto the stumps, while a lot of Bangladesh's inside edges ran away for four. Those are the sort of margins you can't control.
"On the first four days, we were the ones that were very proactive, we were trying to take decisions, we declared quite early, we scored at a quicker rate. Those things don't count at the end of the day when you lose the game. But their discipline was commendable, and you have to give credit to them. Every team plays their own way. That doesn't mean either is wrong or right, you have to find one that brings you results and be consistent with it. Everyone has their own way of playing and Bangladesh certainly brought their own A game, and we found it hard to deal with."
Masood has been around Pakistan cricket to understand the damage this defeat will cause to this Test side. "We're all upset. The whole nation is upset. As a leader of this team, we apologise to the nation for failing to give people the result they wanted. We accept our mistakes as a team."
There is no sign any panic buttons will be hit, though. Masood appeared comfortable with the decision to field an all-pace attack, while he left the door open for the return of Abrar Ahmed for the second Test, saying it would depend on the pitch and weather conditions.
"Even if you lose, it doesn't mean you've done everything wrong," he said. "On the first four days, we were the ones that were very proactive, we were trying to take decisions, we declared quite early, we scored at a quicker rate, at around four runs an over."
But, as he noted dryly, "those things don't count at the end of the day when you lose the game."
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