Pakistan in Test Cricket

Origins and an early breakthrough

Pakistan played their first Test in October 1952 at Delhi, lost by an innings and 70 runs, and then won the next one at Lucknow by an innings and 43 - only Australia, winners of the first Test of all, got off the mark sooner. Fazal Mahmood took 12 for 94 in the second Test on a matting wicket, and set the shape of Pakistan’s Test cricket for its first decade: quicker than average pitches at home, seam-plus-cut bowling led by Fazal, and batting built around Hanif Mohammad, whose 337 at Bridgetown in 1958 batted 970 minutes to save a Test against West Indies.

Pakistan drew their first away series in England in 1954, 1-1 (the 24-run win at The Oval squaring it), and lost their first away series in the West Indies 3-1 in 1958. From 1952 to 1970 Pakistan played 59 Tests and lost only 17.

The Imran era and after

Imran Khan captained Pakistan from 1982 through 1992 and won series in India (1986-87), England (1987, 1992) and West Indies (drawn 1-1 in 1988, then 1-1 again at home in 1990). The 1980s Test decade is Pakistan’s best: 80 Tests, 23 wins, 13 losses, 44 draws. Imran took 362 wickets at 22.81 across his own career; his fast-bowling successors, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, then shared 787 more between 1985 and 2003, mostly with the old ball reverse-swinging in ways every other pace attack subsequently tried to copy.

The 2000s were a rebuild after that partnership retired: 83 Tests, 30 wins, 31 losses. From 2010 to 2019 Pakistan played nearly every home Test in the United Arab Emirates because of security concerns; that ten-year span produced a home win rate of 48% (15 wins in 31 UAE Tests) and included the biggest win of the modern side against Australia, at Abu Dhabi in October 2018.

Signature players

Hanif Mohammad - 55 Tests, 3,915 runs at 43.98. Called “The Little Master” before Sunil Gavaskar was; his 337 in 1958 remains the third-longest Test innings by time in the sport’s record. Two of his three brothers also played for Pakistan.

Imran Khan - 88 Tests, 3,807 runs and 362 wickets. Captain of the side that won its first away series in India and England within a year; the only Test cricketer with more than 3,000 runs and 300 wickets whose batting average outpoints his bowling by more than 10 runs.

Wasim Akram - 104 Tests, 414 wickets at 23.62. Left-arm fast, both new ball and old, and one of the two bowlers who made reverse-swing a recognised skill rather than a folk practice. His partnership with Waqar Younis is the point of reference for every fast-bowling pair the format has assembled since.

Home, away and a decade in the UAE

Pakistan have played 157 Tests at home, 35 in the UAE (two short stints in 2002, then 2010 to 2018), and 264 away. Home in Pakistan itself: 59 wins to 25 losses and 73 draws (38%). UAE: 17 wins to 10 losses and 8 draws (49% wins). Away: 72 wins to 107 losses and 85 draws (27%). The UAE record is the striking one - a home advantage the country had to build in someone else’s conditions, and lost when Test cricket returned to Pakistan in 2019. Since then the home record in Pakistan itself has been 4 wins in 13 Tests.

Rivalries

England at 89 Tests is the most-played: 21 Pakistan wins to 29 losses and 39 draws. Australia at 72 is next: 15 wins to 37. Against New Zealand (62 Tests, 25 wins to 14) and India (59 Tests, 12 wins to 9) Pakistan hold the head-to-head record; the India series has not been played bilaterally since 2007 and every match against them since has been at a neutral tournament.

Recent form

Pakistan’s 2020s decade: 29 Tests, 11 won, 12 lost, 6 drawn. The wins include a 2-0 sweep of Sri Lanka in 2023 (the Colombo Test won by an innings and 222 runs) and a 2-0 series in Bangladesh in 2021. The losses include home defeats to Australia and England in 2022 and to Bangladesh in a two-Test series in 2024. The rebuild since Test cricket returned to Pakistan in 2019 has not yet found the stability the last decade of exile had.

What CricArcade shows

The Follow-On lets you pick a Pakistan XI from any point in the record above - the Imran side of the late 1980s, the Wasim-Waqar attack, a 2018 UAE XI, a modern combination - and play a five-day Test at any of the venues that appear here. The engine reads real careers rather than a single rating, so Wasim bowls the length he actually bowled, Younis Khan bats through the middle overs, and a home Test at Karachi plays differently from an away one at Lord’s. The results in this piece are the real ones; the game is the choice of which of them to try to repeat.