Impact of T20 leads to transformation in Pakistan fielding

New generation bring standards never seen before from the tourists, writes Tim Wigmore

Last Saturday at Lord’s, Joe Root played a beautiful square cut into the ground. Fielding at backward point, Imam ul-haq dived to intercept the ball and grabbed it cleanly. In a split-second of athleticism, four runs became none, prompting the Pakistan team to run to give Imam a high five.

It was a microcosm of the transformation in Pakistan’s fielding. Imam, like all of their young players, is dynamic in the field; rewind 15 years and his uncle, the brilliant batsman Inzamam, would reach down to field balls with the air of a man rather insulted at being asked to do so.

After an England Test defeat as abject as that at Lord’s, fingers have inevitably been pointed at Twenty20 – for England’s shoddy shot selection and marginalisation of the County Championship. But ask Pakistan about the impact of T20 and their answer will be very different: the shortest format has done more than anything to improve their fielding standards.

To understand the roots of the brilliant performance at Lord’s – when they did not drop a catch and, until a couple of pieces of poor ground fielding on the third evening, barely missed a ball – it is necessary to understand the impact the Pakistan Super League has had on cricket in the country.

Pakistan cricket’s nine years in exile have cost the board about $200 million (£151 million), because of the extra costs of playing their home matches in the United Arab Emirates and the loss of ticket revenue. For the next generation, it has also deprived them of the opportunities of learning from foreign coaches, as few have been willing to stay in Pakistan for long.

The PSL, launched in 2016, changed this. For one month a year in the UAE, Pakistan’s best young cricketers play for leading foreign coaches and with top international players. As this is the format which most demands athleticism, fielding has been emphasised like never before. A measure of this shift is that a higher proportion of catches are taken in the PSL than Australia’s Big Bash.

At Lord’s, England did not just glimpse the batting and bowling skills of a team being regenerated, but saw a new generation of effervescent fielders.

Shadab Khan is both in keeping with the stereotypes of Pakistani cricket – he is a brilliant teenage leg-spinner – and also completely removed from them: he is a vivacious fielder, too. Shadab was known as a precocious fielder even before the PSL but the tournament honed his athleticism, just as it did for Imam and Faheem Ashraf.

When elevated to the national squad, these players sharpened their fielding and fitness meticulously. After Mickey Arthur was appointed head coach in 2016, he appointed Steve Rixon as fielding coach. “What we’ve done, again, is that uncompromising way we’ve worked with fielding and fitness standards,” Arthur explained before Lord’s.

Before his very first tour – the series in England in 2016 – the team trained with the army; the sight of Pakistan’s players doing press-ups on the Lord’s outfield was an acknowledgement of how this had helped. This time – as he has made the norm – Arthur oversaw a pre-series camp in Pakistan and, during the early tour matches and the Test in Ireland, honed the side’s slip fielding. Asad Shafiq’s diving catch on the first day, to account for Jos Buttler, amounted to stunning vindication.

Playing in Dubai, Arthur believes, has forced Pakistan to achieve new heights of fitness. “You get to Dubai and you get to 50, and it’s 40 degrees, you have guys throw their wickets away. Now their fitness standards allow them to get 80s and hundreds.”

Arthur was not the first foreign coach to stress the importance of fielding. In many ways, he shares the same qualities as Bob Woolmer, who also coached South Africa before taking the Pakistan job.

From 2004 to 2007, Woolmer brought a new emphasis to fielding as a core skill, not merely a nice garnish on the side. Arthur is completing the revolution. Since he took over as coach, Pakistan have taken 80 per cent of catches in Tests.

Pakistan have always been capable of outbatting and outbowling opponents. Now, they routinely outfield them as well.