Pace variation key to success, says Yasir Shah
By AFP Published: July 16, 2016
Pakistan's Yasir Shah celebrates after taking the wicket of England's Joe Root in First Test at Lord's on July 15, 2016
LONDON: Pakistan’s Yasir Shah said varying his pace had been behind his spectacular return to Test cricket at Lord’s on Friday.
The leg-spinner took five for 64 as England reached stumps on the second day of the first Test on 253 for seven — 86 runs behind Pakistan’s first-innings 339.
It was the first time a leg-spinner had taken five wickets in a Test innings at the ‘home of cricket’ since Shah’s fellow Pakistani Mushtaq Ahmed performed the feat 20 years ago.
What made the 30-year-old Shah’s feat all the more impressive was that this was his first Test outside of Asia and the United Arab Emirates.
It was also his first Test since completing a three-month drugs ban after he tested positive for the masking agent chlortalidone.
Shah told the International Cricket Council (ICC) that he had inadvertently taken his wife’s blood pressure medication and his suspension was lifted in March, making him eligible for the England tour.
After he induced the well-set Joe Root to hole out on 48 and so end a second-wicket stand of 110, Shah ran through England’s middle order, with James Vince, Gary Ballance, Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali also falling to the spinner.
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