Representative photo · Photo: Neweditorpk / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Pakistan batter Saud Shakeel became only the fifth player in Test history to be dismissed in the nineties during both innings of a match against Sri Lanka.
Pakistan's middle-order batsman Saud Shakeel produced a notable performance during the first Test match against Sri Lanka in Rawalpindi, anchoring the team's batting effort. Playing at the number five position in both innings, the left-handed batsman accumulated scores of 93 and 97, narrowly missing out on reaching the three-figure mark on consecutive occasions. Despite falling short of centuries, his consistent contributions ensured he finished as the leading run-scorer for Pakistan across both innings.
These scores cemented Shakeel's name in cricket history, though through a rare and unwanted statistical distinction. By getting dismissed in the nineties in both innings, he became the first Pakistani batsman and only the fifth player overall to record this feat in the history of Test cricket. Prior to this performance, only four cricketers had experienced the same outcome in a single Test match.
The exclusive list of players who previously reached the nineties in both innings comprises Australia's Clem Hill, England's Frank Woolley, West Indies batsman Gordon Greenidge, and Sri Lanka's Mahela Jayawardene. Before Shakeel, Jayawardene was the most recent player to share this statistical anomaly, having scored 92 and 96 against New Zealand at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo in August 2009. Among all players, Gordon Greenidge remains the solitary cricketer to have been dismissed in the nineties in both innings on more than one occasion, achieving the feat against Pakistan in Georgetown in March 1977 and against New Zealand in Christchurch in February 1980.
Saud Shakeel became the first Pakistani batsman to fall in the nineties in both innings.
This occurrence places Saud Shakeel alongside a select group of historical cricketers, highlighting a rare pattern of dismissals just short of centuries in international red-ball cricket. For cricket enthusiasts and followers of the sport in South Asia, the milestone underlines both the high level of personal achievement in anchoring the innings and the unusual statistical rarity of missing consecutive hundreds by narrow margins.
