RAWALPINDI
\nPakistan captain Shan Masood on Saturday heaped praise on his colleagues saying the national side showed tremendous character to register back-to-back victories against England and win their first Test series on home soil since 2021.
\nComing from an innings defeat in the series opener, Pakistan levelled the series in Multan before arriving in Rawalpindi where they rolled out a raging turner.
\nFor Pakistan, spin twins Noman Ali and Sajid Khan claimed 19 of the 20 English wickets to secure a nine-wicket win that also secured their 2-1 series victory.
\nExpanding on the win, Masood said: \u201cLike London buses, they come together. The first win came after a long time and it was backed up by a series win. It\u2019s special.\u201d
\nAfter losing the opener, Pakistan took a bold selection call by dropping three frontline players \u2014 batter Babar Azam and the pace duo of Naseem Shah and Shaheen Afridi.
\nSajid and Noman were brought in and the duo claimed 39 of the 40 English wickets in the last two Tests, apart from producing useful cameos with the bat, to vindicate the move.
\nSajid cut his chin while batting on Friday and had to change his bloodied shirt but returned on Saturday to spin a web around the English batters. \u201cFor everyone to stand up and give their best means a lot,\u201d said Shan, who sealed Pakistan\u2019s victory with a six off England spinner Shoaib Bashir.
\n\u201cIt is about characters, people you can trust, people you think can bleed for you \u2014 Sajid literally bled for us yesterday. \u201cTo be here and standing as the winning team is the most special thing for us,\u201d he remarked.
\nEngland folded for a meagre 112 in their second innings with only Joe Root (33) looking comfortable against the hosts\u2019 rampaging spinners.
\nTheir usual tactics of swashbuckling batting have looked somewhat one-dimensional and inadequate on turning tracks and against in-form spinners.
\n\u201cThe last couple of Tests we\u2019ve been thrown some challenges, and I think it\u2019s pretty easy to assess that were weren\u2019t able to stand up to those challenges,\u201d said England captain Ben Stokes while reflecting on their loss.
\n\u201cThe great thing about sport is that those challenges will always come along, but in the last two games, we weren\u2019t able to match what Pakistan threw at us.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got a very quick turnaround to another challenge in New Zealand, so we\u2019ve got to put the disappointment of the last two games behind us and move on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RAWALPINDI Pakistan captain Shan Masood on Saturday heaped praise on his colleagues saying the national side showed tremendous character to register back-to-back victories against England and win their first Test series on home soil since 2021. Coming from an innings defeat in the series opener, Pakistan levelled the series in Multan before arriving in Rawalpindi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-439742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n