It is easy to see why images of Mohammad Yousuf came so easily to the minds of those watching Hashim Amla's majestic unbeaten 311 at The Oval, particularly in the commentary boxes. All were quick to mention, in some haste, that the flossy beards both batsmen sport were immaterial to the comparison – it was the patience and serenity Amla exhibited, the deft flicks from those slick, powerful wrists, the handsome ease with which he pierced the field and the combination of audacity and dexterity to execute the occasional late cut, the artful batsman's ultimate demoralisation weapon.
There was one glorious back-foot drive off Jimmy Anderson that raced to the fence and a host of more orthodox, graceful cover drives. It was those shots especially that reminded The Spin of Yousuf but the little flourish at the top of his backlift also brought back older memories of arguably the most aesthetically pleasing and textbook-purest right-handed cover-driver this writer has seen. By coincidence that batsman, Zaheer Abbas, who turned 65 on Tuesday, made the previous best Test score in England by a man of Asian heritage, whose 274 Amla overtook on his way to establishing the fourth-highest innings in the 476 Test matches played in this country since 1880.
Remarkably Zed's 274 came in only his third Test innings, batting at No3 for Pakistan in the first Test at Edgbaston in 1971 against Ray Illingworth's England, who had won the Ashes in Australia only five months before. He was 23, a late comer to the game after his father had told him to concentrate on his studies because "you cannot make a living" from cricket. He took the opportunity afforded by his father's posting to Saudi Arabia to defy the ban to take up the invitation to join the Karachi club Park Crescent and such was his progress that by the time his father had returned from the Gulf Test selection beckoned.
He came to the wicket in Birmingham to face the fourth ball of the match when the opener Aftab Gul ducked into a short ball outside off stump from Alan Ward and left the field with blood pouring from a cut above his ear. Bespectacled players – Zaheer's gold rims were among the most famous of all cricket's glasses – always exude a vulnerability, as the Sun's Clive Taylor noted in his evocative allusion about David Steele being "the bank clerk who went to war". There was nothing frail about Zaheer, though, as he ran through the treasury of his strokes from the start with, wrote the Times's John Woodcock, "as effortless a swing of the bat as Edgbaston ever saw". Towards the end of his career it was alleged that he was hesitant against the short stuff but here, in front of a sparse crowd of only 6,000, he put away bouncers from Ward and Peter Lever with what John Arlott described as "hooks which flashed like sword strokes".
The Dawn's Qamar Ahmed, who was there, remembers: "Even the greatest batsman of his time, Colin Cowdrey standing in the slips, cheered his sensational stroke-play in admiration. It is no exaggeration, but not before or since have I watched such artistry in batting. Zaheer's silken grace as he drove, pulled and cut the ball with minimum of fuss or effort, was in a class of its own."
It was special because it was so unexpected. Pakistan had a reputation for being susceptible to bullying but as much as Ward, Lever and Ken Shuttleworth tried to unnerve the novice, he responded with a finesse and guile that ran the fielders ragged. "Boycott, Barrington, Sobers and Richards, accustomed to the rigid discipline demanded to play a long innings at international level, would have been well satisfied with such a performance," wrote the Almanack in its Five Cricketers of the Year essay in 1972. "For a virtual newcomer to Test cricket to display impeccable judgment and skill and not to break concentration over nine hours was little short of astounding."
Three years later he was back, scoring 240 at The Oval. Oddly, that was only his second Test century, having suffered a run of poor form when the selectors stuck by him despite him averaging barely 20 in 20 innings. Again there was a touch of sadism from Zaheer for the fielders, this time helped by Surrey's decision no longer to accommodate spectators on the grass. The rope was set at the very edge of the field, making the ground a vast six and a half acres, more than an acre bigger than it had been for recent Tests. Little wonder four of his fours were all-run, and 78 of Pakistan's 600 came in threes. With such a huge space to defend for the bowling side, no batsman was more likely to torment the fielders on a flat, true pitch than Zaheer with his precision, shrewdness and range of shots.
There was greed, too, a virtuous kind of avarice for runs. Eight times over his career he would score centuries in each innings of a match, four of them a not out double and an unbeaten plain old hundred in three-day County Championship games. In all he scored 108 centuries, 49 of them for Gloucestershire, 14 in Tests and 15 more for the Pakistan tourists in first-class matches. He brought up his hundredth hundred in December 1982 at Lahore, scoring 215, his second double Test century against India. The conflict between Pakistan and India halted Tests between the two for the first nine years of Zaheer's career but in the last seven he played 19 Tests against them, scoring 1,740 runs at 87.00. Each side's fear of losing tended to imbue the groundstaff with caution so the majority of pitches were featherbeds but Zaheer was still in a league of his own over those series.
There was a testing spell with World Series Cricket and some sparkling one-day innings but he was particularly cherished in England for his exploits with Gloucestershire where, with his compatriot Sadiq Mohammad and the irrepressible Mike Procter, he lit up county grounds the breadth of England. In 1976 he made 2,554 championship runs and five years later 2,306. He was accused of being obsessed with milestones, a charge to which he cheerfully pleads guilty. "Yes of course I loved to break records and why not?" he told PakPassion. "I loved to bat for hours and hours. Not just scoring hundreds, but big hundreds and then double hundreds and big double hundreds. My job was to score as many as I could." The other indictment is his relative failure against West Indies, making only 259 runs in eight Tests. In mitigation he did score 80 at Georgetown on a fast track in 1977 against an attack including Andy Roberts, Colin Croft and Joel Garner and two years later, in the World Cup semi-final at The Oval, he made 93 against those three plus Michael Holding when putting on a thrilling, elegant 166 off 36 overs with Majid Khan in that ultimately fruitless run chase.
Such lyrical players are often hostages to form and, because they take risks, the early dismissal. In 1983, he addressed his critics, telling David Foot: "I'm either very good or very bad." In 1971 England saw him at his very best and the county that had been graced by WG Grace, Wally Hammond, Gilbert Jessop and Tom Graveney took him to its heart.
Amla's footwork and that sumptuous back-foot cover drive brought it all back. "Never the crack of willow on leather with Zaheer it's the mellow clump brought on by perfect timing," Frank Keating wrote. "Other batsmen bind their bats with Elastoplast, Zaheer seems to bind his with velvet." At times at The Oval, you could have said the same about Zed's latest heir.
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