Just after umpire Bruce Oxenford answered his appeal in the affirmative, Wahab Riaz just sat down by the side of the pitch. We will grant him tiredness, given that it was his 31st over of the innings and that he had bowled at an average speed of nearly 89mph.

To repeat, that is an average speed.

But it would be nice to imagine that it was a sit-in protest at the surface he had been given to bowl on.

Who was the protest directed at? The curator of the Zayed Cricket Stadium would be the obvious target, but perhaps not the right one.

This is a home Test for Pakistan, which has exactly the same implications for the nature of a pitch that it does for home sides across the world. That is, there are no instructions for the preparation of a particular kind of pitch, but there is, ahem, guidance and expectation that it will conform to what suits the home side best.

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In the past, but not this season, the Pakistan Cricket Board has sent curators well ahead of a series to “assist” in the preparation of pitches in the UAE.

It depends partly on venues, too. More than once in India, for example, curators have prepared pitches not just independent of what the home side would prefer, but almost in negation of their strengths.

Curators can be funny men.

Nobody will ever know exactly how this surface came to be the way it is, but it is impossible to think that the late withdrawal of Yasir Shah, to injury, did not have a grave impact on it.

His injury had a great impact on Misbah-ul-Haq and Pakistan’s thinking that is for certain. If the mood of Misbah in the immediate moments after the gravity of the injury became clear is any guide, then a draw was the most ambitious result he was looking for.

At this venue, where Pakistan probably have more influence over the surface than at, say the Dubai International Cricket stadium, a pitch geared towards that ambition is more easily attained.

But that is a disservice to the weapons Misbah currently has at his disposal.

It is no secret Pakistan’s success in the UAE has come from spin.

They have come upon Yasir Shah and Zulfiqar Babar at an opportune moment, given the fading of Saeed Ajmal and Abdul Rehman.

But right now, as the injury to Yasir proved, the options beyond this pair are not obvious. Zafar Gohar, who almost flew in for this Test, has eight first-class matches. Bilal Asif, who might yet fly in, has 11.

Why not rely on pace and gear your strategy to it? Why not extract the most that you can for Imran Khan, Rahat Ali and of course, Wahab?

Before the match and even after Yasir’s injury, with no spinner in sight as replacement, Misbah was still loath to even consider playing three pacemen. That is indicative of the occasional inflexibility that plagues Misbah, evident also in a previous unhealthy over-reliance on Ajmal.

It is not that he does not handle fast bowlers well. Though it was a different format and wildly different surfaces, he was good with a four-man pace attack at the World Cup.

But you could look at the example of someone like Junaid Khan and wonder what would have been (and might still be) if Misbah and Pakistan preferred to get as much out of their pace bowlers as they could. Junaid, so bright and promising once, has fallen away sharply. In some part that is due to problems with his knees.

But how much has it helped his development that nine of his 22 Tests have been played on surfaces not vastly dissimilar to this?

He has, in fact, a single Test in a country which might be considered helpful to fast bowlers — in Johannesburg.

That, it often feels, has been the collateral to the success they have reaped on such surfaces from spin.

And you wonder, watching Wahab do what he did today, whether it is worth it.

osamiuddin@thenational.ae

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