One of the four panelists on A Sports‘ “The Pavilion”, former Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik continues to receive love and praises from fans not only for his expert analysis of the sport and its cricketers, but also for sharing some hilarious and interesting anecdotes from the past.
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With fans, especially in India, enjoying the nuanced analysis coupled with the dose of entertainment on offer from these eminent personalities of the Pakistani cricketing fraternity, Malik recounted an incident from 2015 during the very same programme a few days ago.
Readers must note that the first Test against England in Abu Dhabi that year had taken place on a track worthy to be compared to an innocuous road. Along expected lines, English bowlers including James Anderson and Stuart Broad were made to sweat – both literally and figuratively. With Pakistani batters, especially Malik, making the most of the conditions on offer batting first, Broad couldn’t help but express his helplessness over an apparently concerning issue when the former came out to bat on Day 2 to resume from 124*.
“Stuart Broad had bowled a lot of overs alongside James Anderson and even Mark Wood. The next day when I went into bat again, Broad stood before me and asked, ‘Mate, did you sleep ok?’. I said, ‘Yeah, I slept ok.’ He then said, ‘I did not sleep because I was very tired.’ He had bowled so many overs, and when you are pretty much fatigued, you can’t even sleep properly.”
While Broad and Anderson had bowled only 14 overs apiece on Day 1, it must have been the scorching heat experienced throughout the day which had got the better of the recently retired legendary cricketer.
Shoaib Malik Had Played A Career-Best Knock On Test Comeback
Playing his first Test match after a five-year gap, Malik couldn’t have asked for a better restart to the longest format. An innings which lasted as long as ten-and-a-half-hours only ended after he scored a maiden double century (245), which was only his third three-figure score across 33 Tests by then. As the team went on to post 523/8d in their first innings, a 248-run stand between Malik and Asad Shafiq (107) had become the sixth-highest aggregate for any wicket by a Pakistani pair in the format.
Not only was it Malik’s highest first-class score ever, but he had also become only the sixth Pakistani batter to have smashed a Test double ton while batting at No. 3. In fact, no other batter from his country has since surpassed the double century mark at the very position. Also, having returned back scoring a duck in the second innings, the all-rounder also got himself registered in an infamous list of only six cricketers who have scored a double hundred and registered a duck in the same Test.
Just a couple of days after the commencement of a three-match series, Malik had announced his retirement from Test cricket. Having failed to impress with the bat during the remaining two Tests in Dubai and Sharjah, Malik, then 33, had taken a host of his teammates by surprise. He, in fact, later went on to reveal that he had been contemplating retiring from the format even before the double hundred had arrived.
