Razaullah Shines in Edgbaston Test: A New Star for Pakistan
Cancel the tee time at the Belfry. Push back Cadbury World. The Bullring can wait.
Edgbaston has a new attraction: Razaullah – and Razball.
What looked like a three-day procession for England erupted into a riot of green shirts, flying bats and stunned faces as a 21-year-old Pakistan debutant, known more for his pace than his patience, tore up every script in sight. A dead third Test suddenly crackled back to life, and with it, Pakistan’s battered tour.
A tearaway turns trailblazer
Razaullah walked in at No. 9 with a reputation as a tearaway fast bowler, a raw kid with just eight first-class matches and one century behind him. England’s bowlers knew his name only as a number on the team sheet, one of several changes in a Pakistan side that had looked broken after being steamrolled for 133 on day one.
They know exactly who he is now.
He smashed 81 from 63 balls, an innings of wild, joyful destruction that felt like it belonged to another format and another era. There were flashes of Shahid Afridi in the swagger, hints of Saeed Anwar in the audacity, and the kind of fearless, unfiltered hitting that makes a crowd forget the cold and the context.
He arrived at the crease with three bats. He left having broken two of them.
Former captain Ramiz Raja, watching on BBC Test Match Special, captured the mood in the stands and in living rooms from Lahore to Luton. “It’s the first time he’s been out there for Pakistan ever, and absolutely lights up the show. This is the attitude that was needed,” he said. A debutant, yet already being talked about as a player Pakistan will want “in all formats” because of his “mind, body language and attitude”. A “tremendous fightback”, Raja called it.
It was more than that. It was a jolt of electricity through a team that had looked flatlined.
England’s plans in pieces
As Razaullah went berserk, Joe Root wore the look of a grandmaster who suddenly realises the board has changed shape. Fielders retreated to the rope – eight on the boundary at one point – but the ball kept soaring over them. England’s short-ball plans turned into a feeding drill.
This was not Bazball. This was something far less calculated, far more visceral.
Razaullah launched nine sixes, the joint-most ever in a Test innings in England. The only man to have done it before? Ben Stokes, with his famous 155 against Australia in the 2023 Ashes. Razaullah, on debut at No. 9, matched him. He hit as many Test sixes in one afternoon as Sir Geoffrey Boycott managed in an entire 108-match career.
Every blow shifted the mood. England’s bowlers, so ruthless earlier in the match, suddenly looked short of answers and shorter of ideas. The crowd, many of whom had turned up expecting to watch a formality, found themselves roaring every swing of a player they had barely heard of that morning.
Even his exit came with drama. Given a reprieve when an lbw shout from Dan Lawrence was overturned, Razaullah charged down the pitch next ball and was stumped, a dismissal that felt like theatre rather than error. He walked off to a warm, lingering ovation, a young Pakistani who had just introduced himself to Test cricket with a performance you could feel in your chest.
From surrender to defiance
Three days earlier, nobody would have believed this. Pakistan’s first-innings 133, capitulation just after lunch, had the look of a side in turmoil and out of ideas. England’s 453 only hardened that impression. Supporters with Saturday tickets must have stared at the scorecards and wondered if they’d be refunded rather than entertained.
Instead, they now have a live contest and a story that will be told for years if Pakistan can somehow finish the job.
Shan Masood laid the foundations with a gritty, admirable 95, a captain’s innings in all but name. Babar Azam, freed from some of the pressure that has weighed on him in recent weeks, played with fluency for his 76. For the first time in the series, Pakistan’s batting carried a sense of freedom rather than fear.
Yet it was Razaullah who seized the narrative. His hitting didn’t just add runs; it changed the emotional temperature of the match and perhaps the dressing room. What had looked like damage limitation turned into a charge. What had felt like another bleak chapter in a turbulent few weeks for Pakistan cricket suddenly looked like a pivot point.
Michael Vaughan, another former England captain, didn’t try to disguise the wider significance. “England are going to win this Test match, I’m sure,” he said. “But, Razaullah has given Pakistan cricket some hope. They’ve unearthed a gem and he will be a superstar for many years.”
A different future, in more ways than one
In a parallel universe, Razaullah would be preparing for a summer in the Yorkshire Cricket Southern Premier League with Cleethorpes, having signed for the 2026 season before a national training camp call-up changed everything. Instead, he is lighting up Edgbaston, rattling England and forcing pundits to rewrite their assessments of Pakistan’s future.
Pakistan now sit in credit, with 129 runs to defend. On paper, England still hold the upper hand. In reality, the game has shifted into that strange, volatile space where Pakistan cricket so often lives – between despair and delirium, between chaos and genius.
Vaughan admitted what many were thinking. “There wouldn’t be any person in the world that would’ve thought we’d go to day four,” he said. “That is what Pakistan cricket is. They have had a difficult few weeks. The team has been in turmoil. That is why I love Pakistan cricket.”
England, for their part, will have to sift through a day that exposed tactical missteps as much as it showcased Pakistan’s courage. The obsession with the short ball, the token over of spin, the timing of the second new ball with a spinner – all of it will be revisited in the debrief. As Vaughan put it, “That day today will make the England team realise there is a long way to go to be world class.”
Day four now looms with an edge nobody saw coming. England still expect to close this out. Pakistan, fuelled by a fearless 21-year-old and a rediscovered sense of mischief, suddenly have a sliver of something more dangerous.
Belief.
