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Shan Masood, Jason Gillespie call for more Test cricket for Pakistan

Pakistan’s Test captain Shan Masood has called on Pakistan to play more Test cricket, as he readies his side for a rare season of Test cricket bounty.

Pakistan start a jam-packed home season with a two-Test series against Bangladesh, beginning in Rawalpindi on August 21. They host five more Tests at home, against England and then West Indies, and in between play a two-Test series in South Africa. As an indication of how rare this is, the last time Pakistan played more Tests in a season was over 25 years ago, in the 1998-99 season when they played ten.

More than the number of Tests, the long gaps between them have hindered any chance of progress. The Tests against Bangladesh will be Pakistan’s first since the New Year’s Test in Sydney this year. Once they finish the series against West Indies in January 2025, they are not scheduled to play any Tests until October when South Africa visit (and then none until a series against Bangladesh in March 2026).

Masood argued that the stop-start, intermittent nature of this scheduling has caused a gap to develop between the big three of India, Australia and England and other Full Members. He is not alone in this, with Kraigg Brathwaite having made a similar appeal after West Indies’ 3-0 series loss against England last month.

“We need more Test cricket,” Masood said on the PCB podcast, in which he was interviewed alongside Test coach Jason Gillespie, by former cricketer and broadcaster Bazid Khan. “We play a lot of domestic cricket, so I don’t think we can blame that. We do play ten first-class matches minimum, and with the introduction of departmental cricket, some players ended up playing 16-17 first-class matches in a year.

“For me, it’s more about how we can get our team to play more Test matches. That comes down to scheduling, reducing the gaps, and ensuring we have consistent Test squads going forward. We’re playing nine Test matches in four months, but we’ve also had to deal with an unfortunate calendar where we played in Australia, and then we’re playing our next Test after ten months. These are challenges that Pakistan cricket needs to address going forward.”

“If I’m being brutally honest, in home Test matches, because they’ve been played at different times of the year and against different nations, we still haven’t found our ideal way of playing at home that suits our batting, bowling, and overall style.”

Shan Masood

Masood replaced Babar Azam as Test captain last year, his first assignment a daunting trip to Australia where Pakistan haven’t avoided defeat – let alone win a Test – since 1995-96. They were duly whitewashed but having pushed Australia in a couple of the games.

The first step, Masood believes, however, is to become more formidable at home. For a couple of seasons after Test cricket returned to Pakistan, they built up a winning home record. But since beating South Africa in January 2021, Pakistan have not won in three home series since, and not even won a Test. They were whitewashed by England before somehow escaping with a 0-0 draw with New Zealand.

Those series – as well as an earlier one with Australia – were played on lifeless surfaces, in stark contrast to the livelier ones when Tests first returned. With a new curator – Tony Hemming – in place, that will be under scrutiny again this season.

“In Test cricket, which is the ultimate challenge in the game, you have to be familiar with certain conditions,” Masood said. “Yes, we’ve been playing at home since 2019, but other teams have been playing on their home soils for much longer. We still have to decide what our best approach at home is.

“If I’m being brutally honest, in home Test matches, because they’ve been played at different times of the year and against different nations, we still haven’t found our ideal way of playing at home that suits our batting, bowling, and overall style. That’s something we need to quickly figure out.

“We need to determine what helps us win as a team. How can we create conditions that suit us more and put us in the driving seat, rather than just thinking about how we can cope with the opposition?”

Pakistan’s intentions in the upcoming series against Bangladesh are clear. They have packed their Test squad with fast bowlers and just one specialist spinner in Abrar Ahmed. In part that is down to a lack of spinning options – Nauman Ali and Sajid Khan have both been dropped. But in those initial series at home against Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and South Africa, Pakistan relied on pace and succeeded. They switched to spin against Australia, England and New Zealand and struggled.

There is evidence, as Masood pointed out, that Pakistan have competed reasonably well in more challenging conditions, where they’ve been able to rely on their fast bowlers, but Gillespie said it’s still early in terms of figuring out and settling on an identity.

“I think the identity will sort itself out. In this next period of time, seven Test matches out of nine are in Pakistan, which is fantastic,” Gillespie said. “I echo Shan’s sentiments – it would be great to play more Test cricket. The PCB is exploring ways to have more Shaheens (Pakistan A) games and four-day cricket to bridge the gap between domestic and international cricket. As for identity and playing in Pakistan, there are varying surfaces and conditions depending on whether you’re in the north or south of the country. I don’t think that will be resolved right now. It will be a process to figure out exactly what surfaces we want to play on going forward.

“But I firmly believe we’ve got all bases covered, whether it’s fast bowling, slower bowling, or playing on faster, bouncier tracks that offer more assistance to seamers, or surfaces that are lower and slower. We need to be flexible and adaptable, but we’ll certainly have a basic blueprint on how we want to play our games.”

Pakistan’s upcoming series has already meant that workload management has been an issue. A spate of top players, including Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah, were not given NOCs to play in leagues. Gillespie admitted it was a challenge to balance the demands of playing for Pakistan against separate financial opportunities on offer. But he said the priority, especially for the multi-format players, was to play for Pakistan.

“There are challenges, no question,” he said. “We want to find the balance between representing Pakistan and not denying players opportunities for experiences. There are financial incentives for players to go and play overseas. I know there’s been a lot of media discussion recently about some decisions made by the PCB on player availability. Shan touched on it – there are nine Test matches in the next four months.

“That’s just Test cricket. There’s domestic cricket, white-ball cricket in the 50-over and T20 formats, not just in Pakistan but all around the world.

“We’ve got multi-format players, and we’ve got to look after them as best we can. The priority is representing Pakistan, but if there are opportunities -on a case-by-case basis – where a player can learn about their game and play better cricket, which in turn will help them be a better cricketer for Pakistan, then we’ll certainly consider those opportunities. But we won’t be in a position where we compromise the team, whichever format.”

Osman Samiuddin is a senior editor at ESPNcricinfo

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