Seales’ five for 20 seals a 90-run win as Pakistan lose an eighth away Test in a row
West Indies bowled Pakistan out for 120 chasing 211 at Tarouba to take the first Test by 90 runs, with Jayden Seales taking five wickets and Justin Greaves setting a Test bowling record along the way.
Jul 29, 2026
Pakistan were set 211 on a fourth-day surface at the Brian Lara Stadium and did not last the afternoon. Jayden Seales took the top order apart, the rest of the West Indies attack cleaned up around him, and the hosts closed out the first Test by 90 runs on 28 July to go 1-0 up in a two-match series they can no longer lose.
Pakistan were bowled out for 120 in 40.2 overs. Seales finished with five for 20, the fifth five-wicket haul of his Test career. Babar Azam, leading the side again after being handed the Test captaincy back for this tour, was left unbeaten on 58.
Babar’s innings, and nobody else’s
Pakistan were 71 for 9 and staring at something considerably uglier than a 90-run defeat. Mohammad Abbas walked out, dug in alongside his captain for 12 overs, and the pair put on 49 for the last wicket. It was comfortably the biggest stand of the innings, which tells you plenty about the nine that came before it. Seales ended the match by trapping Abbas lbw for 23.
“We played good cricket in the last few days but today we were not up to the mark as a batting unit,” Babar said afterwards.
He had reason to sound flat. Pakistan had shown the same fault 24 hours earlier, sliding from 244 for 5 to 282 all out in their first innings. Five wickets went down for 38 runs. A team that collapses once has a bad session. A team that collapses twice in a Test has a problem with the middle order.
Greaves and a record nobody had set before
Justin Greaves took the player-of-the-match award with seven wickets for 39 runs across the two innings. His five for 27 on the third day was the first five-wicket haul of a Test career now 17 matches old, and it came with something no bowler had managed before: wickets in five consecutive maiden overs. The previous mark of four belonged to Stuart Broad, set against South Africa at the Wanderers in 2016.
The Barbadian added two for 12 in the second innings, this time working in support of Seales rather than leading the charge. Seales was the more brutal of the pair on the final day. Five wickets at four runs each, on a pitch offering enough for a bowler who hits his lengths, is a spell that finishes a Test on its own.
Abbas kept Pakistan in the fight
The tourists were not outplayed throughout. Mohammad Abbas ran through West Indies for 181 in their second innings, taking five for 22 from 15.5 overs for the seventh five-for of his Test career, and that spell kept the target within reach. Shan Masood’s 109 in the first innings was the only century of the match, with Imam-ul-Haq’s 63 pushing Pakistan to 282 in reply to a West Indies total of 311.
Shai Hope had made 92 off 182 balls in that first innings and Kavem Hodge 84 off 183, both grinding rather than dominating. Nobody in this Test found batting easy. Twenty-nine runs separated the sides after one innings each, and the gap only opened up once Pakistan had to bat last.
Eight away defeats and counting
The loss stretches Pakistan’s run of consecutive Test defeats away from home to eight, the longest such streak in their history. It started with the 3-0 whitewash in Australia in December 2023 and has followed them through South Africa and now into the Caribbean. Babar has the captaincy back for this tour and for the England Tests that follow it. His first match in the job has lengthened the streak rather than ended it.
Port of Spain, and why India should watch
The second and final Test starts on 2 August at Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain, running to 6 August. Pakistan need to win it to square the series and stop the away streak reaching nine.
Both matches count towards the 2025-27 World Test Championship, which is where Indian fans have a stake in the result. India sit fifth in the standings and resume their own campaign in Sri Lanka from 15 August, with the first Test in Galle and the second at the SSC in Colombo from 23 August. Every result in this cycle moves the percentages, and Pakistan handing West Indies points in the Caribbean shifts the maths for everyone chasing a place in the final.