(EPNCRICINFO) – Bowlers win Test matches, and on a slow, placid track at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, it took a monumental effort from Rashid Khan for Afghanistan to pull off their third victory in only their sixth Test match.
Carrying what was effectively a three-man attack of otherwise modest penetration, Rashid bowled 99.2 overs across back-to-back Zimbabwe innings and picked up 11 wickets. The other bowlers from both sides picked up a combined 16 wickets from 327.1 overs.
Rashid is a global T20 superstar, but this performance – taking place in the outer reaches of Test cricket, outside the World Test Championship – showed off all the facets of his bowling that aren’t on view in the restricted canvas of limited-overs cricket. Most impressive was the tireless effort he put in, over after over, without losing the verve and zip to keep challenging both edges of the bat on a pitch with neither the pace nor the bounce to encourage wrist-spinners.

Oh, and he did all this with the middle finger of his bowling hand not yet fully healed from the fracture that had kept him out of the first Test.
Rashid’s efforts left Afghanistan needing 108 to win in the last 45 overs of the match. They got there for the loss of four wickets in 26.1 overs, with Rahmat Shah leading the way with a confident half-century. The target was too small to truly challenge Afghanistan on this pitch, and Zimbabwe’s bowlers didn’t attack the stumps often enough to test their batsmen. Rahmat breezed along to 58 off 76 balls before playing across the line of a Ryan Burl leg-break that kept low and bowled him. By then, Afghanistan were nearly home, needing just seven more to win.

Zimbabwe may have eventually stumbled to the defeat that seemed a foregone conclusion when they followed on 258 behind, but for 70.4 overs, Sean Williams and Donald Tiripano had made them dream. Exactly 20 years after VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid had batted through an entire day’s play to turn a follow-on situation on its head, Williams and Tiripano were threatening to do something similar. They had batted through the entire post-tea session on day four, and they were within four minutes of batting through the entire first session of day five.
They had put on 187 for the eighth wicket, and moved Zimbabwe from minus 116 for 7, effectively, to 71 for 7.

Then Tiripano, five runs away from a maiden Test hundred, ran into the Rashid wrong’un. He’d seemed to pick Rashid out of the hand right through his innings, and had dealt with his threat magnificently even when he was getting the ball to scoot through low. The slowness of the pitch had helped Tiripano negotiate Rashid for 108 balls, but no one is ever entirely safe against him, not even when he’s starting his 93rd over of the match.
For once, Tiripano didn’t pick Rashid out of his hand, and the pace of his delivery negated the slowness of the pitch, zipping through to strike him on the back pad and punish him for playing back to a good-length ball.
The Zimbabwe innings ended with a similar wrong’un to dismiss Victor Nyauchi with Williams left stranded on 151.