Rehan Ahmed’s jocular manner was a neat encapsulation of the joy and daring that this England Test team under the captain, Ben Stokes, and the head coach, Brendon McCullum, are exuding - would any previous England regime have played an 18- year old leg spinner with only three first-class matches under his belt? - but this was also an indication of the cheery optimism and self-belief that Ahmed obviously possesses.
He has immediately appeared to be at home on the Test stage. And sometimes the very best cricketers also seem to have an uncanny ability to ride their luck and, in doing so, alter the landscape of matches. Sir Ian Botham used to do that regularly. These are very early days for Ahmed, of course, but he had done exactly that in Pakistan in dismissing Babar, who had just passed 1,000 Test runs for the calendar year, the fourth player to do so after Joe Root, Usman Khawaja and Jonny Bairstow.
It had been crunch time when Ahmed was belatedly introduced to the attack. Babar and Saud Shakeel had been going so well, steadily building a fourth-wicket partnership. Ahmed’s first over was uneventful, with only two runs coming from it. Ahmed decided to drag his length back a little, resulting in that long hop. Ahmed’s next ball, to Mohammad Rizwan, was another long hop that the batsman pulled away for three, and soon there was a full toss that Shakeel pushed for only a single.
Ahmed produced the most delicious leg break, exactly as he had been imagining the Babar ball to have been, to find Rizwan’s edge. The next delivery was a beautiful replica, but Salman Agha somehow avoided nicking it. These were two telling deliveries. The first sighting of Ahmed earlier in the match had revealed that, with quite a high (right) bowling arm and a (left) front arm that does not do a great deal of work, the googly is his more dangerous and, indeed, more easily achieved ball from a very modern leg spinner’s action and a quicker pace of delivery that brings to mind Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan.
But Ahmed has been working hard with England’s spin-bowling coach, Jeetan Patel, on delivering with a slightly lower arm and more side spin to bowl that leg spinner, and that was nicely evident here.
Ahmed had changed the course of the match. The fairytale was completed with two more wickets after the break for the five-wicket haul, but the damage and the impact had been made in that spell.
The excitement around him now will be enormous, given how rare successful leg spinners are in England, and that will obviously need to be managed. With Jack Leach now firmly installed as the No 1 spinner who can bowl in all conditions, it may be that Ahmed does not play another Test until next winter in India, where England will next require two spinners.