Pakistan won just four games in the last edition of the World Test Championship. Only Bangladesh won fewer Test matches in the entire cycle. Especially dismal was their performance at home, where they did not win a single game out of eight.

Their inability to identify their own strengths was a major factor behind their poor record at home. They prepared flat surfaces for almost all of their home games. While their batters scored big runs, the opposition would score them quicker and come out on top.

Pakistan’s batting run rate in the 2021-2023 World Test Championship cycle was 2.99, the third-lowest of all teams. At home, it increased marginally to 3.04, but remained the third lowest. They conceded 3.54 an over (3.87 at home): both numbers were the worst among the nine teams.

With results not going their way and teams around the world slowly but steadily waking up to England’s famed Bazball methods, Pakistan needed to change something. And they did.

By stumps on day two of the Galle Test between Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the visitors had scored 221-5 from 45 overs, at a run rate of 4.91. In the entire duration of the previous World Test Championship cycle, they had scored at more than four an over only once, in Kingston against the West Indies in 2021. In the subcontinent, they had scored at more than four runs per over only once since July 2015 – against Sri Lanka in Karachi in 2019.

If they got close to the Sri Lankan total on day two, they overhauled it and left it far behind on Day three courtesy of a stoic Saud Shakeel double century. The innings run rate dropped below four by the time it finished as Shakeel and the tailenders focused on stretching it out to get as many runs as possible over doing them as quickly as possible once they were on top.

An incredible first double-century in Test cricket for Saud Shakeel!

What an innings 🔥#SLvPAK pic.twitter.com/g828WBkZ9B

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) July 18, 2023

With more than two days left in the Test match, it was a wise decision that showed that while they might be making conscious efforts to bat quicker, they are also willing to respond and adapt to situations.

The decision to increase their scoring rate is not the only out-of-the-comfort-zone move that Pakistan have tried of late. On day one of the Test match, their seamers resorted to bowling short with fielders on either side of the wicket stationed for pulls, hooks, and cuts. For a team whose fast bowlers have dismantled oppositions with swing – conventional and reverse – for generations, this was another example of how them being willing to try out different paths to reach a different destination from the one they have been reaching lately in Test cricket.

Their borderline nonsensical declaration against New Zealand just two Test matches ago, where they set a target of 138 in 15 overs, provided a glimpse into how Pakistan were desperately looking for ways to change things up.

As their 2023-2025 World Test Championship campaign has begun in Galle against Sri Lanka, they might just have found the right way to go about doing that.