‘Shafiq made a match out of nothing’ – Misbah

Impossible, Muhammad Ali once told us, is not a fact, nor a declaration. It is a dare. It is potential. It is temporary. The most abridged version of his famous quote comes down to three words: “Impossible is nothing.”

In cricketing terms, a fourth-innings Test chase of nearly 500 has always been viewed as impossible. And with good reason: of all the 1504 times that a team has batted in the fourth innings of a Test, only once has that team scored more than 500. That one occasion was in 1939, in the famous timeless Test in Durban, when 10 days of play was insufficient to bring a result, and the match ended only because England had to catch their ship home.

So when Steven Smith declared at the dinner break on day three at the Gabba, setting Pakistan 490 to win, their task seemed impossible. Time was not an issue. They had seven sessions ahead of them, plenty of time to score 490 runs. But this was a team that had been rolled for 142 in the first innings. A team that had been embarrassed. A team that might not take the match into day four, and certainly not day five.

But Pakistan don’t believe anything is impossible. This is a team that reached No.1 in the world this year, despite not having played a Test in their own country since 2009. For Pakistan, every Test is an away Test. Away from friends, away from family, away from home. Away from everything. And yet, they reached No.1. Impossible is nothing.

Pakistan began the …

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