Pakistan’s Test side, so often accused of squandering promising positions abroad, finally converted one. An eight-wicket victory over West Indies in the second Test at Queen’s Park Oval, Port of Spain, from August 2-6 squared the two-match series 1-1, and gave Babar Azam’s team their first away Test win in three years, according to ESPNcricinfo’s match report. The turning point was a chanceless 168-run partnership between opener Abdullah Shafique and Babar himself on the second day, one that dragged Pakistan back into a contest they had trailed for most of the first two days.
How the Match Turned
West Indies had posted 344 in their first innings at Queen’s Park Oval, leaving Pakistan facing a substantial deficit. Shafique, who entered the match short of red-ball runs and under scrutiny after a lean run in the top order, responded with a fluent unbeaten 107 off 185 balls, striking ten fours and two sixes before the close of the second day, according to reports from the ground. Babar Azam, playing in his second stint as Test captain, supported him with an unbeaten 86, and the pair’s stand effectively wrestled momentum away from the hosts. Pakistan went on to chase down their target for the loss of just two wickets, sealing the eight-wicket win.
A Century Three Years in the Making
For Shafique, the innings carried personal significance beyond the result. It was his sixth Test century and his first since 2024, a drought that had raised questions about his place in the side after a string of low scores against spin and disciplined seam bowling on tours of Australia and South Africa. Coming back from that form slump in a match Pakistan needed to win to salvage the series gave the innings extra weight in the eyes of touring journalists covering the tour.
Context: A Series That Followed a Familiar Script
West Indies had won the series opener in Tarouba by 90 runs on July 25-28, batting Pakistan out of the contest with a first-innings total of 311 backed by disciplined bowling that restricted the tourists to 282 and 120. That result extended a pattern: this is now the third consecutive bilateral series between Pakistan and West Indies to finish 1-1, a scoreline that speaks to two sides evenly matched in quality but each prone to costly lapses. Babar’s second stint in charge, after handing the captaincy over and later reclaiming it, was under a degree of pressure heading into Trinidad, and a series loss would have reopened questions about his leadership.
Two Ways to Read the Result
Pakistani commentators have framed the Trinidad win as evidence the top order, and Shafique in particular, is finally maturing against different conditions overseas — a genuine positive after years of batting collapses on tour. The counter-argument, made by some regional analysts, is that West Indies’ batting remains fragile enough that any disciplined bowling effort will expose it, and that Pakistan’s win says as much about the hosts’ depth problems as it does about Pakistan’s improvement. West Indies’ collapse from a strong first-innings position in the second Test lends some weight to that skepticism.
What It Means Going Forward
The drawn series leaves both teams roughly where they started in the World Test Championship 2025-27 table, with West Indies occupying the bottom position and Pakistan sitting eighth, according to the latest points standings. For Pakistan, the more pressing test comes almost immediately: a three-match series in England beginning August 19 at Headingley, against a home side captained for the first time by Joe Root since Ben Stokes’s retirement from the format. Shafique’s runs in Trinidad will matter little if Pakistan’s top order cannot repeat the performance on English pitches offering considerably more seam movement than anything on offer in Port of Spain.
The Bowling Attack That Sealed It
Pakistan’s chase and Shafique’s century tend to dominate the headlines, but the win in Port of Spain was also built on a disciplined second-innings bowling effort that restricted West Indies to 117 in their follow-up innings, a collapse that opened the door for the small fourth-innings target Pakistan eventually chased down. Spin played an outsized role on a Trinidad surface that offered more turn than usual as the match progressed, with Pakistan’s slower bowlers exploiting rough patches created outside the right-hander’s leg stump. That two-innings pattern — West Indies competitive in the first innings, then collapsing in the second — has been a recurring theme in the hosts’ recent home Tests, according to regional cricket writers, and it is a fragility opponents have increasingly targeted with patient, attritional bowling rather than raw pace.
Babar Azam’s second stint in charge of the Test side had been under close watch after a first term that ended amid criticism of his tactical conservatism. The Trinidad win, built on a personal contribution of 86 not out alongside sound in-match decision-making during the chase, gives him a tangible result to point to early in this second term. It does not erase the tougher scrutiny that will return the moment Pakistan struggle again, but for now it buys him the kind of goodwill a series-levelling overseas win is designed to provide, particularly ahead of a considerably harder assignment in England later in August.