West Indies 311 (Hope 92, Hodge 84, Ali 4-50) and 181 (Joseph 38, Chanderpaul 35, Abbas 5-22) beat Pakistan 282 (Masood 109, Imam 63, Greaves 5-27) and 120 (Babar 58*, Seales 5-18) by 90 runs
But if West Indies felt they had won that first hour, things were about to get exponentially better. Roach and Seales were accurate with their lines right from the outset, and when one jagged back into Imam-ul-Haq, it took his gloves with it en route to the keeper. Azan Awais did not last much longer with Seales lulling him into an expansive drive and producing enough sideways movement to draw an edge. But he saved his best delivery of the session for Salman Agha, nipping it in sharply from over the wicket and stealing past the inside edge to ram into the front pad on middle stump.
Masood finally walked out after Ali Usman’s forgettable debut ended with an edge to second slip, but the discomfort he was in was obvious. The fractured finger on the right hand caused him to effectively bat one handed, and it was only a matter of time before his limited mobility caused him to scoop tamely to backward point.
As Pakistan disintegrated rapidly, resistance came in the form of an entertaining, though ultimately meaningless, tenth-wicket partnership between Babar and Abbas. While Babar initially shielded Abbas from the strike, getting to his 32nd half-century, he soon began to hand the bulk of the strike to the No. 11. Neither survival nor caution was on his mind as he cleared the front leg and swung wildly, riding his luck to the innings’ second highest score.
But it was like screaming into the void, resistance without the heroism. Pakistan dragged West Indies to tea, but Seales, who took five wickets on debut against this opposition, struck Abbas on the pads with his second delivery of the session, and Pakistan’s resistance, modest as it was, was finally broken. West Indies had the win they had deserved, and on what would have been Garry Sobers’ 90th birthday, a mourning region had been given its present.
