Pakistan triggered a revamp of sorts ahead of the West Indies tour by handing the Test captaincy back to Babar Azam and overhauling their bowling attack to arrest their slide in Tests away from home. But it did not have the desired impact as Pakistan suffered a 90-run defeat in the first Test at Tarouba. There have been several such resets over the last few years and one thing this team has learnt is to keep tinkering until something works.
A look at the pitch in Port of Spain convinced them to overhaul their bowling strategy for the second and last Test. Pakistan arrived in the Caribbean with as many as five pace bowlers and only two specialist spinners, expecting pace to play an outsized role. With the series on the line and their losing streak away from home now stretched to an unprecedented eight defeats on the bounce, Pakistan redrew their plans and benched their two most experienced fast bowlers on tour - Mohammad Abbas and Khurram Shahzad - and played Sajid Khan and Ali Usman on a pitch which was expected to assist the spinners. The omission of Abbas attracted the most scrutiny, but Sajid and Usman ended up sharing 14 of the 19 West Indian wickets to set the stage for a dominating eight-wicket series-levelling win.
"We decide our combinations based on the pitch and we had to leave him [Abbas] out because of the conditions here," Babar said after the second Test. "We brought in two spinners as the pitch demanded it. The fast bowlers got good bounce on day one which made me wonder if I had committed a mistake, but the ball turned when spinners bowled. It was good how we clicked as a team with the bowlers and batters playing their role throughout the match."
While Usman had made his debut in the first Test and bowled only 13 first-innings overs, Sajid, who returned 8 for 117 across two innings in Port of Spain, was one of the four players to come into the side for the second Test. Ubaid Shah and Awais Zafar made their Test debuts while Abdullah Shafique returned for his first Test since October 2025.
Shafique replaced the injured Shan Masood, the centurion of the first Test, at No. 3 and scored a splendid 160* during his 323-ball stay. It was because of the 183-run stand for the third wicket between Shafique and Babar that Pakistan ended up scoring 43 runs more than West Indies' 344 in the first innings. The same pair - with an unbeaten partnership of 35 in the chase - ensured Pakistan overhauled the slim target of 75 runs on a treacherous pitch after the wickets of Imam-ul-Haq and Azan Awais. Both batters remained unbeaten on 24 in the second innings.
Reflecting on Shafique's magnificent comeback, Babar said: "He had been playing proper red ball cricket [in President's Trophy grade-2] for the last two months because of which he came in with confidence and I could not see any nervousness on his face when he batted. He has demonstrated that he has returned to the side as an improved player."
Pakistan's batting fragilities were on display throughout these two Tests. They lost the last seven wickets for 38 runs in a stunning first-innings implosion and were bowled out for a mere 120, chasing 211, in the first Test. Though Shafique and Babar were able to avoid any dramas in the second innings at the Queen's Park Oval, Babar's run out for 88 in the first innings triggered a middle-order collapse as Pakistan lost four wickets for 30. With such collapses becoming regular, the team got together after the first Test to address the matter. Though the spin-conducive conditions at the Queen's Park Oval resembled what they experience at home, Pakistan batters spent more time practicing against spin in the nets in the lead up to the second Test.
"We have worked hard over the last couple of months [at the NCA in Lahore] for this series and the three Tests in England which follow," Babar said. "The pitch here and the conditions were different from the last Test, which we could not win as we fell short in batting. Later, we sat together and discussed our mistakes from that match.
"As professionals you have to be ready for different conditions that you may encounter at different venues, but we practiced for spin more than fast bowling after the previous Test which helped us."