Razaullah's Stunning Debut Turns Test at Edgbaston
England will wake up on Saturday needing 130 runs and a clear head. Pakistan, written off, ridiculed and almost on the plane home, have somehow left this series with a live contest and a new cult hero.
Day three at Edgbaston belonged to a 21-year-old debutant batting at number nine.
Razaullah rips up the script
Pakistan were 318-8, still behind, time draining away, the match seemingly drifting towards a routine England win and a quiet weekend. Then Razaullah walked out and set fire to the script.
He thrashed 81 from 63 balls, an innings that started as carefree hitting and morphed into something far more serious. Nine times he cleared the ropes, equalling Ben Stokes’ record for the most sixes in a Test innings in England. He also matched Tim Southee’s mark for the most sixes by a Test debutant.
England’s bowlers, dominant all series, suddenly looked rattled and short of answers. The Hollies Stand, muted for much of this Test, finally found its voice.
Razaullah’s onslaught turned 318-8 into 449 all out, and a Pakistan side that had been 133 all out in the first innings and 0-2 second time around into a team with a total to defend and their pride restored.
He did not do it alone. His eighth-wicket stand with Muhammad Abbas was pure chaos and pure theatre. The pair added 121, Abbas swinging his way to 42 with two sixes of his own, including a muscular blow over cow corner off Ollie Robinson. Abbas even unfurled reverse-sweeps against Dan Lawrence, a shot that summed up Pakistan’s sudden freedom.
By the time Abbas poked Josh Tongue to point and Razaullah was finally stumped off Lawrence in a frantic finish, Pakistan had dragged this match into territory nobody expected: England chasing on day four, nerves guaranteed.
Razaullah left to a raucous ovation, already stamped as Pakistan’s breakout star of the tour.
Pakistan finally show their steel
This was supposed to be a procession. It almost became an exhibition of resolve.
From 55-2 overnight and 268 runs behind, Pakistan’s top order did what they had failed to do all series: they stayed. They absorbed. They fought.
Shan Masood and Azan Awais extended their third-wicket stand to 125, batting with a calm that had been missing in the first two Tests. Awais, just 21, stroked the ball crisply through the off side and looked every inch a long-term prospect before glancing Lawrence down the leg side for 59.
Masood, in what is likely his final Test in the country where he went to school, moved serenely towards a hundred. On 95, he was denied in brutal fashion: a flashing cut, a sensational one-handed snare by Lawrence at gully off Gus Atkinson. A fine innings, ended by a moment of brilliance.
Babar Azam, always stylish, compiled 76 and briefly seemed in complete control. England changed the mood with a short-ball barrage either side of tea, unsettling Pakistan’s captain and dragging him into a mistake. Tongue’s bouncer did the job, Babar gloving or fending his way out, and at that point a three-day finish felt inevitable.
Pakistan had other plans. Or rather, Razaullah did.
‘Razball’ and an England attack out of answers
Up to the point Razaullah arrived, England had done little wrong. They hit the right lengths when the ball moved, used the short ball intelligently, and held some sharp catches. Tongue’s 4-42 in the first innings and his hostility again on Friday underlined why he has been the find of the summer.
Then the game flipped. The fields went back, the plans frayed, and England’s attack lost their discipline.
Atkinson was launched into the Edgbaston building site, three times in one over. Jofra Archer, usually the hunter, became the hunted, driven straight back over his head for consecutive sixes. Anything remotely in Razaullah’s arc disappeared.
England tried the bouncer theory with boundary riders scattered like confetti. When they pitched it up, they missed their lines or met a solid defensive bat. When they banged it in, Pakistan’s lower order swung harder.
Robinson, in the form of his life, watched as the second new ball went not to him but to Lawrence. Root’s decision will be revisited if this chase turns sour. Archer’s body language told its own story as Razaullah kept climbing into him. Root himself briefly left the field as the chaos grew.
By the end, Atkinson was reduced to bowling bouncers with eight men on the rope, a scene more reminiscent of a T20 death over than the closing stages of a Test innings.
The late wickets – Abbas to Tongue, then Razaullah stumped after cracking Lawrence for that record-equalling ninth six and overturning an lbw decision – felt like a release for England rather than a triumph. They walked off chastened, still ahead in the game, but no longer in total control of it.
A chase with a sting
England’s first-innings 453, built on a spread of contributions from Harry Brook (75), Jamie Smith (69), Lawrence (65), Emilio Gay (60) and Robinson (50), had seemed more than enough after Pakistan’s 133. Razaullah’s 4-148 with the ball on debut hinted at his all-round talent before his late fireworks with the bat confirmed it.
Now that lead has been whittled to a target of 130. On paper, it is modest. In context, it is laced with jeopardy.
Pakistan have been humiliated for much of this tour. On Friday, they finally hit back. Their bowlers will take the field on Saturday with runs to play with, a crowd engaged, and the knowledge that, for the first time in this series, they landed some heavy blows.
England should still finish the job and seal a 3-0 clean sweep. But after Razaullah’s eruption and Pakistan’s revival, nobody inside Edgbaston will treat those 130 runs as a formality.
