Sajid Khan Credits Urdu Misdirection for Enhancing His Batting Performance

Pakistan offspinner Sajid Khan has been successful in unsettling England through various tactics, such as twirling his mustache and thumping his thigh to invade personal space. Despite primarily using his spin and flight variations to bamboozle the English batsmen, he discovered a new way to confuse them on Friday - their spin bowlers' ability to communicate in multiple languages.

After the fourth ball of the 86th over, once Saud Shakeel had flicked Shoaib Bashir away to turn the strike over to Sajid, the pair met to discuss how to manage the strike, and didn't appear to bother if the stump mic picked them up. Sajid, presumably, was to see off the final two balls, but he danced down the wicket and launched Bashir over midwicket into the Javed Miandad stand.

It could hardly have been the plan, but according to Sajid, the intended audience for the conversation wasn't each other but Pakistani-origin spinners Rehan Ahmed and Shoaib Bashir.

"We were only doing that [speaking loudly in Urdu] to deceive the bowlers. Rehan and Shoaib understand Urdu, so to fool them, we wanted them to hear we were only looking for the single. When we did that, they brought the field up and the bowlers flighted it. Saud told me once they do, no half measures: just go for the big shot as hard as you can."

And Sajid did. The next over Bashir bowled, Sajid plundered two sixes and a boundary in much the same way, swinging towards the midwicket boundary, finding the middle of the bat with regularity. 19 came off that over, and though Rehan kept him quieter, he was stung once when he spread the field out. Sajid took the men at long-off and long-on, comfortably clearing the rope. The wheels, by now, had begun to come off England's bowling effort, and Pakistan's lead had ballooned.

Rehan acknowledged the quality of the innings, but was having none of Sajid's claims. "He didn't fool me at all, he just said it for the media," he laughed "I didn't even hear him. He said something like he's going to run down this ball and I knew he was going to try and scoop me, and it didn't really work. I think he batted well, and he hit some big blows, but he didn't really fool me or Bash."