Rahmat Shah's 173 Gives Afghanistan a First-Innings Lead as Zimbabwe Fight Back in Sharjah

There are innings that change a match, and then there are innings that change the way a match is remembered. Rahmat Shah's 173 in Sharjah belongs firmly in the second group.

When the Afghanistan captain walked out on the fourth morning, his team were still 102 runs behind Zimbabwe's 504, with only three wickets in hand and a day-three collapse still fresh in the memory. By the time he finally walked off — stumped by Tafadzwa Tsiga off Graeme Cremer, after 346 balls, 14 fours and three sixes — Afghanistan had 514 on the board, a 10-run lead, and a Test match that had looked lost was suddenly alive again.

It was not a flashy innings. It was never going to be. Rahmat builds his runs the way he has built his whole Test career: one careful leave, one soft-handed defensive shot, one punished bad ball at a time. He reached his hundred early in the day with a steer to the boundary, his fifth in Tests and his second in as many matches since taking the captaincy, following his century against Bangladesh last month. Then, instead of stopping, he simply carried on.

The stand that did the real damage was the one nobody had planned for. Zia-ur-Rehman, a lower-order batter asked to do an unfamiliar job, stayed with his captain for 91 runs for the eighth wicket, digging in for 91 balls of his own while Rahmat did the scoring. Zimbabwe's bowlers, who had done so much damage with the second new ball late on day three, found nothing to work with on the fourth morning. The deficit shrank over by over — below seventy, below fifty, below twenty — until Afghanistan were level, and then ahead.

Newman Nyamhuri, Zimbabwe's best bowler in the match, eventually finished with five for 82, and it was his dismissal of Mohammad Saleem for nine that finally ended the innings. But by then the damage was done. Zimbabwe had posted 504, built on centuries from Brendan Taylor and Brian Bennett, and for two days it had looked like enough. Then Sediqullah Atal and debutant Rahmanullah Zadran both made hundreds on day three, putting on 206 for the second wicket, and now their captain had gone one better.

Zimbabwe's second innings did not start the way they would have wanted, either. By the latest check they were 38 for 2, with Zia-ur-Rehman — the same man who had frustrated them with the bat — taking both wickets to fall, including Ben Curran caught for 12. Brendan Taylor, who made 131 in the first innings, was unbeaten on 25, holding the innings together almost single-handedly.

The match is not decided. Zimbabwe lead by 28 with eight wickets in hand and a full day's play still to come, and a draw remains the most likely outcome on a pitch that has barely misbehaved. But the shape of this Test has changed completely from the moment Zimbabwe posted 504, and it has changed because Afghanistan refused to be buried under it. Three hundreds in one innings, a captain's 173 at the heart of it, and a lead — however small — that nobody in Sharjah would have predicted when the fourth morning began.