Pakistan's red ball captain Shan Masood expressed disappointment after England defeated his side by an innings and 47 runs on home soil in the first Test.
The Green Shirts faced a humiliating defeat at the home soil, becoming the first international team to lose a Test match by an innings margin despite scoring 500-plus runs in an innings.
After putting up 556 on the board in their first innings, Masood's side squandered the advantage and allowed the tourists to post a colossal 823-7 declared and complete an innings and 47-run win on day five.
"It is disappointing to lose again. England found a way to win the match; they created their window of opportunity. Harsh reality is that test cricket's quality sides find a way to win matches," the skipper said while addressing a press conference after the loss.
Masood, who replaced Babar Azam as test skipper in November and has lost all six of his matches at the helm, admitted the inability of Pakistan’s bowlers to take 20 wickets in the recent games.
"The trick for us is that we should learn, obviously, from England as well. They found ways to get those 20 wickets. You can't win tests without picking up 20 wickets," he said.
The captain admitted that the Pakistani team was not learning from its mistakes, saying: “We can't blame anyone but ourselves. Where we made lapses, they didn't and capitalised on their opportunities.”
He also shared that the pitch in the Multan Stadium did not play out as they expected.
“We were expecting this pitch to get better for bowling after day two […] It did change on the fourth day when we came to bat as some cracks had opened up and there was a little something for the bowlers with the new ball.”
Defeat was Pakistan's sixth on the trot and they have now gone 11 matches without victory on home soil since beating South Africa in 2021.
Pakistan will have a chance to recover from this haunting defeat as they have two more Test matches against England with the second starting from October 15 at the Multan Cricket Stadium.
- Harry Brook
