Pakistan left out Mohammad Abbas for the second and last Test against the West Indies at the Queen’s Park Oval on Sunday. The call surprised all and sundry in light of Abbas’ performance in the first Test, in which he took a five-for in the second innings. In fact, for the past several months, he has been the most efficient among all Pakistani pacers. So dropping an in-form player shocked everyone.
At the toss which the Caribbean team won, Pakistan captain Babar Azam said Abbas was dropped because of the conditions at the Port-of-Spain Stadium. Not because of any injury, but because of the conditions! Pakistan made four changes to their XI from the first Test. They handed debuts to Ubaid Shah, fast bowler Naseem Shah’s brother, and batsman Awais Zafar. Abdullah Shafique (batsman) and spinner Sajid Khan also made it back to the Playing XI. Aamer Jamal, Khurram Shahzad, Shan Masood (injury) and Abbas were meanwhile the ones who lost their places.
The Queen’s Park Oval historically offers a lot of support to spinners, so Pakistan can’t be entirely blamed for the call they made, but the question is: why would you bring in an inexperienced bowler like Ubaid Shah and put him under pressure in a very important match? Having lost the first game by 90 runs, the Pakistanis are already trailing 1-0 in the two-game rubber. If Abbas had been replaced with a spinner, that would have made sense but because Shah took his place, which can only mean one thing, that despite his top-notch bowling in the first Test and in the several past months, the team management doesn’t have too much confidence in him.
Anyway, after deciding to bat first, the West Indies finished the opening day of the contest on 239/5, with Justin Greaves playing the most important innings of the day. His 64 not out off 125 balls was a clinic in patience. The home team was at one time struggling at 174/5, but captain Roston Chase (36 not out) and Greaves, who had taken a five-for in the first game, took them to safety at the end of the day. Out of five wickets, two wickets went to spinners with Sajid and Ali Usman being the wicket-takers. Mohammad Ali and Shah picked up two and one wicket respectively.
We don’t know how the call to drop Abbas is eventually going to affect Pakistan, but he was definitely missed on the opening day.
