"Babar Azam strikes with a magnificent century"

"As is common and seemingly customary in this part of the cricketing world, the crowd increased rapidly when their local hero and captain approached the wicket for the first time with bat in hand and 126 balls later, Babar Azam raised his bat aloft in a muted celebration of a quite brilliant and carefree century.

His Pakistan team needed it.

Still trailing by a bucketful of 1st innings runs, Azam continued to caress and cajole the ball around a loud and lively Pindi Cricket Stadium until when on 136, he “holed out” to Jack Leach giving the England spinner the first of two catches today and the second of three wickets for fellow spinner, and a part-time one at that on his Test Match debut, Will Jacks. The departure of the Pakistan captain left his team on 473–5 and was the first of three late wickets today that firmly turned this Test Match in favour of the touring England team. They toiled on a dead wicket as did their hosts for a day and a half before them, and throughout an afternoon session entirely dominated by Babar Azam and Saud Shakeel where it appeared as though we were approaching an impasse and an almost certain stultifying, if high scoring, draw".

The above extract is from Part 4 (of 5) from my self-published book in May 2023 entitled "Ashes to Ashes" as I watched England through the night from the Ashes series in Australia in 2021/2022 through to their New Zealand tour of February 2023, and via the West Indies and here, Pakistan.

The book I'm immensely proud of is linked below together with other ways and means of supporting me, if you are able, to thumb the eye of traditional publishers who refused to read my original manuscript!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5Z3FVYC

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.paypal.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/steveblackford

Thanks for watching!

Please "like" and subscribe!

Thank you.