Pakistan Sent Seven Players Home From a Series They'd Already Lost

Two Tests, two innings defeats, one dead rubber to go, and the PCB's answer was seven players out, two coaches out, one selector out, and two Mohammad Imrans in.

By Silly Point. Satire. The facts are real, the grudges are mine, the joke markets are not markets.

The purge

There's a way clubs handle losing 2-0 with a game to go. You pick the same eleven, you say the word "pride," you lose the third one by less. Pakistan did not do that. After Lord's, the PCB sent seven players home. Rizwan, Imam, Salman Ali Agha, Ali Usman, Aamer Jamal, Awais Zafar, Khurram Shahzad. Imam was injured. Ali Usman had taken a maiden five-for at Headingley two weeks earlier. Under the PCB's appraisal system that's a warning.

Then they sent the head coach home. Then the bowling coach. Misbah-ul-Haq resigned from the selection panel in protest. Afridi said it was the most shocking decision he'd seen. Afridi has retired more times than most people have retired from anything. He has seen a few.

Salman

Salman Ali Agha captained Pakistan at Headingley. Thirty-sixth man to do it. Two weeks later he was on a plane. That is the fastest promotion-to-departures in Test history, and he'll have the armband in a drawer somewhere, and one day his kids will find it and ask, and he will not know how to explain it, because there is no explanation. There's a lazy Susan, and everything on it eventually reaches the airport.

The replacements

Saim Ayub and Abdullah Fazal came in with ten Test caps between them. Five came in with none: Arafat Minhas, Mohammad Imran Jnr, Saad Baig, Mohammad Imran Randhawa, Razaullah. Two Mohammad Imrans. Nobody has said which one bowls. The Imrans may not know. They met on Monday.

The Test side will be coached for one match by Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke, who coach the white-ball side. A Test coach for one match isn't a coach. It's a supply teacher. The class has already hidden the board rubber.

How the fortnight started

Babar Azam got hit on the right hand in the warm-up game by an England Under-19 seamer called Manny Lumsden. Same hand he'd been hit on against West Indies in August. No fracture. No Babar at Headingley. Pakistan 171 and 135. Then Lord's, 110 and 194. Mohammad Abbas took 5 for 57 and was the best thing about the tour, so he's still here, which tells you the lazy Susan isn't entirely random. Just mostly.

Tuesday

Edgbaston, 9 September. Five debutants. A supply teacher. A captain of uncertain fitness. Ollie Robinson on 99 wickets, waiting. It was supposed to be a dead rubber. Pakistan have never once in their history allowed anything to be dead. It's the one thing they're consistent about.

I say all this with love. Pakistan are the only side on earth that make my club's selection meeting look orderly, and my club's selection meeting once let me bat at four.

Things I loved

Markets that do not exist but should