Mark Wood's pace was instrumental to England's win in Multan two years ago but they hardly missed him this week, such was Brydon Carse's impact. Carse replicated Wood's role on Test debut, bowling at high pace with the old ball to finish with match figures of 4 for 140 - which would have been even better but for two dropped catches off his bowling.
Wood, who is stuck at home recovering from an elbow injury, sent Carse a WhatsApp message to wish him luck the night before the Test, and another after the second day to reassure him that conditions do not get much tougher for fast bowlers. Carse admitted it had been "a long slog" at times, but the early evidence is that he has the raw materials to make him a success.
He has already impressed in white-ball cricket, taking eight wickets in last month's ODIs against Australia in vastly different conditions. "Playing one-day cricket in England in seven or eight degrees is very different to coming out here, and it's had its different challenges," Carse said. "But I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and the role that I've played this week."
Carse took four wickets at 106 in his four Championship matches for Durham this season, but England's management viewed those performances as utterly irrelevant. They pick on attributes, not averages, and believed that Carse's bustling pace and endurance would enable him to withstand the rigours of playing Test cricket overseas.
And Carse's record alone did not tell the story of his summer: three of those four matches came shortly after he found out that he was the subject of an investigation by the Cricket Regulator into a series of bets he had placed as a young professional. It led to a three-month ban, ending his hopes of making his Test debut in the English summer.
The prospect of days like Friday - completing and then celebrating his first Test win - helped him through some dark moments. "I had some time off to work on a few things that I wanted to and improve my fitness in certain areas," he said. "I've come back refreshed and just wanting to do well and play as much as I can for England."
Carse was picked for the first Test ahead of Matt Potts, his Durham team-mate, because England want at least one genuine fast bowler in their attack every time they take the field. He regularly hit 90mph/145kph on the first day of the Test, and sustained his pace through the match enough to strike Aamer Jamal on the helmet with a short ball on the final morning.
He batted at No. 9, and hit his second ball for six to take England past 800. "I was winding the lads up saying, 'I don't think many of you have got off the mark with a six,'" Carse joked. Down the line, he could be a viable No. 8 - as evidenced by a pair of first-class hundreds, most recently against Somerset in August.
Carse has been on England's radar for some time: born and raised in South Africa, he toured with the Lions in 2019-20, shortly after qualifying. He made his ODI debut in 2021, when England's first-choice squad were decimated by Covid protocols, and impressed some senior players that winter when part of the Lions squad which shadowed England's Ashes tour.
"He got injured quite early on… But you got the impression he could have been added to the squad and actually done a job," James Anderson recalled on the Tailenders podcast. "I just really like him: he bowls quick, he can move the ball, and he's got that sort of action where he almost pauses in his delivery stride and then really snaps at the crease, so it makes it feel even quicker for the batters."
On the fourth evening in Multan, Carse demonstrated that he has skills as well as stamina. He had been gifted a wicket with his first ball of Pakistan's second innings - Saim Ayub wildly slogging to mid-off - and was bowling in tandem with Chris Woakes, who had started to get the ball reversing. Woakes passed on the message, and Carse pounced.
"I joked with him and said, 'Here we go, right, I'm going to target the stumps,'" Carse said. "And the next ball, it reversed back in." The ball tailed back late, flicking the top of Mohammad Rizwan's back pad before cannoning into the top of middle stump. "I felt like I was bowling quite nicely to him in the previous over, so to get him out was a nice feeling."
Along with Potts, Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue, Carse was one of the fast bowlers that England invested heavily in last winter, awarding them two-year central contracts as they look to build a stock of fast bowlers ahead of next year's Ashes tour. They share a similar profile: they are all seamers rather than swing bowlers, whose stock balls nip back in.
Carse, at 29, is the oldest of those four. After his ban this summer, which reinforced the temporary nature of an athlete's career, he exudes the sense of a player determined to grasp his opportunity. "It's been a special five days," he said. "It's been hard graft, and it was difficult at times today [Friday] but it's very rewarding to come away with a win."