Pakistan’s cricketers come out as heroes against Australia — after losing

Well, as heartbreaks go, our hearts go out to Pakistan’s cricketers as they fell short by 40 runs against Australia at the Gabba in Brisbane on Monday. It would have been a recordbreaking display of grit, patience and simmering drama if Asad Shafiq had not fallen to a snorter of a Mitchell Starc delivery at 137, and if Yasir Shah had not got run out and folded aTest match that was being practically unfolded out of Australia’s hand.

Instead, it was a display of grit, patience and simmering drama anyway. Here was a fifth day of a Test match that justified why god created five days of Test cricket and it must continue to exist in these days of Twitter20 and pile-’em-up-runs-on-a-flat-as-a-dosa-pitch cricket.

Test cricket’s beauty lies in its spiritual similarities to a sprawling landscape: meandering turns, all kinds of digressions, avalanches and mudslides, and natural formations produced over time. It is the length and breadth of Test cricket at its best — invisible to the short-sighted and narrow-minded —that lends matches like the one at Brisbane its drama and glory. The fact that Pakistan made Australia very, very, very nervous is doubly awe-inspiring: not only did Misbah-ul-Haq’s side almost breach Steve Smith’s citadel, but it did so as 11ronins — samurais who have no master — or, in the case of this Pakistani squad, with no home ground to call its own.