Sami Chaudhry's column: How to attack three regular spinners?

If the Pakistani team is piled up by spinners somewhere outside Asia, it is quite surprising. It is very difficult to digest that the middle order consisting of Sohaib Maqsood, Mohammad Hafeez, and Fakhr Zaman was defeated by three English spinners.

In English bowling, eleven overs of spin took five wickets for just 87 runs. Moin Ali was the only one who was unsuccessfully attacked but Matt Parkinson and Adil Rashid did not allow the Pakistani batsmen to dare to do so.

Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan once again gave a solid start and led the match with the same strategy which is the only way to top the batting line, to save wickets for the last ten overs.

And despite the early dismissal of Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan ensured that a safe platform was provided to his lineup of successors. The required run-rate does not matter much on occasions when the team has hitters who can score 20 runs in an over if needed.

This was the plan that led Pakistan.

In contrast, Butler's plan was quite different. The English captain who scored the most individual goals in this match knew that it was very difficult for the wicket pacers and it was almost impossible to defend the target with a pace attack on the ground with small boundaries.

Undoubtedly, the Pakistani pacers bowled well in the death overs and took a total of six wickets, but the total cost of these wickets was a bit heavier than the pockets of Pakistani batsmen. Pakistani pacers scored 127 runs in 11.5 overs. An economy rate of more than ten per over does not reflect any good bowling effort.

Butler probably learned from these statistics and named the 11-over quota for spinners. He also had two regular league spinners. The only hope of survival on a batting-friendly pitch was to slow down the ball, and Parkinson was the best example.

In such a high-scoring contest, when a bowler loosens the hands and feet of the batsmen, it becomes a source of uncertainty for the batting team. It was this instability that blew the key wickets of Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Hafeez, and Fakhr Zaman.

The most important stage of the innings was in the middle overs and Pakistan lost five wickets for 34 runs in the middle overs. And this famine of men came when Moin Ali and Hamnawa were questioning the capabilities of Pakistani batsmen.

Although the series is not over yet, this defeat could prove to be a lesson for Pakistan if the same match was being played on the wicket of Abu Dhabi or Dubai during the World Cup and the Pakistani batting in the middle overs of the innings against the spinners. What would this middle order do if it had to score with the required run rate?

This defeat is making it clear once again that the whole of this batting line depends on the partnership of Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan. If both the batsmen return to the pavilion without achieving 70% of the target, then the batting order is the same as the one passed in the dark.

This defeat is also showing the crookedness of the bowling line that without Hassan Ali, this bowling attack is facing difficulties in breaking the flow of runs. Although Shaheen Afridi does his part, but even in the last match, apart from his quota, the rest of the bowling gave more than ten runs per over.

Now, before the next match, Pakistan has to resolve the issue of how to attack the three regular spinners. And this question is not so difficult that good spin players cannot answer.