Mohammad Abbas marked his run-up, and trundled up to the bowling crease. He landed one on a length, as usual, and at the other end, Babar Azam defended with conviction. As Khurram Shahzad readied himself to bowl the next one, Abbas shared a word of advice. This one landed slightly shorter, and beat the outside edge. The bowlers shared a smile and a high-five. With darkening skies over Centurion, there was some Christmas cheer around after all. Abbas had slotted right back into this group.
There is no mystery, no hidden secrets with Abbas, which is what makes the last three years so mysterious. He is a team man, popular, mild-mannered, helpful to a fault. He doesn't have the ostentatious aggression of the express quicks like Shoaib Akhtar, nor the insouciant arrogance of the not-so-expresses like Mohammad Asif. No one seems to fully know why he spent the last three years out of the side, and everyone thinks bringing him back was a great decision.
Graeme Welch, who has been Abbas' bowling coach at Hampshire, calls him "one of the best blokes I ever met" as well as "one of the best bowlers I've ever seen". At Hampshire over the past three seasons, Abbas's consistency has been relentless, averaging 19.26 for his 180 wickets.
"I've got on really well with him, even to the extent I call him one of my friends now," Welch tells ESPNcricinfo. "I can't speak highly enough of the fella".
Abbas wasn't exactly ordinary before he joined up with Welch and Hampshire, either. He last played for Pakistan in Kingston in August 2021, the same place he made his debut four years earlier. In those four years, he had already packed in a stellar international career, a ten-wicket haul in Abu Dhabi against Australia, 14 in a two-Test series against England, and a sensational new-ball spell that culminated in a famous dismissal of Ben Stokes. By the time he'd played his most recent Test, he had taken 90 wickets at 23.02; the only Pakistan bowler to have taken more wickets at a superior average is Imran Khan.
"I couldn't believe he wasn't in the Test team," Welch says. "Looking at the last coaching regime [in Pakistan], I think they went down [the route of] looking at pace. I spoke to Shan Masood and he's a big fan of Mo and wanted Mo in the team.
"Mo was just, I think, waiting for the management structure to change or something like that, because obviously they went down the pace route. It's nice to have pace but with our bowling attack we've got down here, it just shows accuracy just as good as anything. And if you can have a group of bowlers with a batting group not going anywhere, that's just as good as anything. It's testament to him as a bloke that he hasn't lost his desire, he didn't lose his will to play for Pakistan and that's why he is taking his game to a next level by getting fitter."
During Abbas's absence, pacers Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi and Haris Rauf all succeeded in Test cricket to varying degrees. However, bowlers of Abbas' mould also came and went, with Mohammad Ali, Khurram Shahzad and Mir Hamza all called up to the Test side. In terms of sheer numbers, Abbas outshines them all, taking 223 at 20.24 since his last red-ball involvement with Pakistan; no other Pakistani bowler was as prolific or as efficient at first-class level during this period.
Masood, too, believes Abbas belongs in the Test side. "I've been captain for a year so I can only speak for the conversations that happened during that time," he said at a press conference on the eve of the first Test. "Abbas was someone who was my type of bowler in that if you want to build up stocks of fast bowlers, he definitely slots in there.
"A year ago, during the Australia series, we had six fast bowlers who were in the side and who had performed well in domestic cricket. You've got to give players a full chance and look at conditions. The England series was such that Abbas's skillset wasn't as important, but we felt that going into South Africa, we needed a bowler who gave our bowling lineup a number of overs and control. His skill is second to none."
Mickey Arthur, who was Pakistan head coach when Abbas made his debut, and later team director while Abbas was out of the side, has spent much of the last three years watching him from the opposition dugout as head coach at Derbyshire.
"I think it's a very good selection," he tells ESPNcricinfo. "Mohammad Abbas still bowls incredibly well in England. I think there may have been a consensus he might have lost a bit of pace. I don't know that for certain.
"But if he gets it right, Abbas has the ability to bring the ball back. He challenges the front pad of the batter and he challenges the stumps. And any bowler that does that consistently in South Africa can have decent returns."
It might be hard to justify depriving Abbas of three years of Test cricket in his early 30s, but the timing of his selection opens up the possibility of a much-deserved redemptive arc.
It was here, six years ago, that Abbas's performance threw up the greatest disparity between his potential and his end-product. Having missed the first Test of that series through injury - one of the other concerns that has occasionally kept him out of the Pakistan side - his battle with South Africa's own medium fast seam bowler Vernon Philander was tipped as one of the decisive plot points of the series.
However, that would be a series defined by exceptionally high pace, to the point Arthur at the time was coruscating about the quality of the South African wickets. Abbas, for his part, was never at his accurate best, and an errant spell on the first evening in Cape Town was heavily punished. He ended up bowling much too wide, far too full and a touch too slow. Abbas was largely ineffectual, finishing with five wickets at 46.20.
"He bowls good lines and lengths, and that's what you need in South Africa to challenge their top order," Arthur says. "If he's confident and comfortable in his own ability and he bowls with that confidence, gets through the crease, he has enough pace to challenge people with the new ball in South Africa."
Whether he does have enough pace, though, remains an open question. He made his name on the dustbowls of the UAE, his unerring accuracy when he honed in on the front pad proving claustrophobic for batters. The manner with which he has got batters out belies his line; in the absence of swing, outside edges are harder to find, and so he simply hones in on the stumps with 47 of his 90 Test wickets being either bowled or lbw. Philander, with whom his skillset is sometimes compared, picked up just 72 of his 224 wickets this way, with 152 caught dismissals, revealing the wider corridor conditions have permitted him to bowl in.
A possible lack of options led Abbas to ask Welch for ideas about what to change in his game. "I did try to get him to do was bowl bouncers," Welch says. "He looked at me as if I was stupid, but actually, I think he got about five or six wickets with bouncers last year, so he's added that to his game a little bit. There's a few things technically, which he wanted me to keep an eye on. It's just as about as he's getting to the crease, if he isn't feeling fully in rhythm or he isn't into his spell, he slows up just a little bit before the crease, which stops his momentum and he doesn't bowl as quick, so we kept an eye on that for a little bit."
These perceived issues, though, have never hindered him from gobbling up wickets at a ferocious rate. Before he was called up to the Pakistan squad, he found sizzling form in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy. He is currently the joint second-highest wicket-taker (31) this season at an average of 14.38. While none of those games were televised, it is hard to imagine pitches being too similar to the ones in Hampshire where he's built up a reputation of such esteem that apparently no one can knock him off his perch.
An apocryphal anecdote suggests Hampshire demonstrated that value when Manchester City came to stay at the Hilton last season, and requested the penthouse suite for their manager Pep Guardiola for a few nights. They were turned down because Hampshire just couldn't bring themselves to take it off Abbas.
Welch says that was "100%" true. "Mo's got the suite on the left-hand side as you look out from the changing rooms. Pep wanted that suite but couldn't kick Mo out of there. We always have a laugh and a joke about that. Everybody loves him at the club. He's been a great ambassador and I'm sure everybody just wishes him so wishes him well. I definitely do."
Respect and fondness have never been hard too hard for Abbas to achieve. Now he now has a shot at the one thing that proved strangely elusive - another chance with Pakistan as he pushes into his twilight years, one that most seem to think he should have got a long time ago. Abbas has always been patient, though, and if he can make amends to his indifferent performances in South Africa last time around, it might just be one of the few things more precious than a Hilton Penthouse suite. After all, as even Guardiola is finding out now, even the best can stumble into a rough patch.
With additional reporting by Matt Roller