Shadab walked off at 97. England celebrated. DRS had other plans. Then came Superman.

Pakistan were 154 for 9 in the 34th over, chasing 242 at the Gaddafi Stadium. Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Arafat Minhas — all gone. The tail had been ripped off. Haris Rauf, a man whose Test batting average hovers around 5, walked out to join Shadab Khan. England needed one more wicket. Just one. The tri-series was theirs to seal.

Eighty-nine runs later, with 17 balls to spare, Pakistan had won by one wicket. Shadab Khan had 113 not out from 96 balls. Haris Rauf had 7 not out from 19 — and the most important seven runs of his career. The Gaddafi Stadium, half-empty when Rauf walked out, was shaking by the time he hit the winning boundary.

It was not just an ODI innings. It was the kind of thing that makes you wonder if cricket has a screenwriter.

At 97, with 21 runs still needed, Gus Atkinson trapped Shadab in front. The umpire's finger went up. Shadab started walking. England's players began to celebrate — handshakes, fist-pumps, the body language of a team that believed they had just won.

But Shadab turned around and called for the review. What the replays showed changed everything: an inside edge, clear enough to overturn. Not out. From walking off at 97 to walking back to the middle with a second life and a century three runs away.

He reached the hundred two balls later, and by then the Gaddafi Stadium sounded like it was being torn apart from the inside. Rauf, the No. 11 who was not supposed to last five balls, punched the winning boundary through cover. Pakistan had pulled off the most improbable heist in their ODI history.

Of all the things Shadab said after the match, this was the line that went everywhere. When the presenter asked what he and Rauf were talking about during the most stressful last-wicket stand in ODI history, Shadab grinned and said they were talking about 'other things.' Not tactics. Not field placements. Not run rates. Something else entirely — and something that will stay between them forever.

It is a perfect encapsulation of what made this partnership work. Two men in an impossible situation, one of them a specialist fast bowler batting at 11, and they were laughing. They were relaxed enough to joke around while chasing 88 with the last wicket intact. That is either supreme confidence or supreme absurdity. In this case, it was both.

The 89-run stand between Shadab and Rauf surpassed the 64-run partnership between Deryck Murray and Andy Roberts for West Indies against Pakistan at Edgbaston in the 1975 Cricket World Cup — a stand that had survived 51 years as the highest tenth-wicket partnership in a successful ODI run chase.

That 1975 partnership was itself a moment of cricketing legend, scored in the inaugural World Cup. That the record fell to another Pakistan match — and to a leg-spinning all-rounder and a fast bowler who averages 5 with the bat — only adds to the absurdity of what happened in Lahore.

The PCB's social media team posted four words that captured the mood: 'SHADAB SUPERSTAR KHAN! WHAT A KNOCK!' Within hours, 'Superman Shadab Khan' was trending. Comparisons to Javed Miandad's Sharjah six and Abdul Razzaq's impossible chase in Abu Dhabi started flooding in.

Then the international players weighed in, and the tributes escalated.

Shai Hope distilled it into the only two words that mattered: 'Cricket 🤝 Absolute Cinema.' Ian Bishop called it brilliant. Daren Sammy simply wrote: 'Wow.. another thriller.' When Ian Bishop, a man who has seen everything in cricket broadcasting, calls something brilliant without qualification, you know the innings has passed into a different category.

The comparisons to Miandad's Sharjah are not hyperbole. Miandad's six won a match from an unlikely position. Shadab's 113 won a match from a position that was supposed to be mathematically and psychologically dead.

Amid all the noise, the social media frenzy, and the record-breaking, Shadab posted something quieter after the match. He dedicated the innings — his maiden ODI century, the greatest knock of his career — to his mother and his wife.

No elaborate statement. No brand-managed PR. Just a man who had pulled off the impossible naming the two women who mattered most. In a sport drowning in content and curated moments, the simplicity of it hit harder than any of the five sixes he hit during the innings.

Shadab Khan came into this tri-series as a player whose ODI batting numbers had never matched his talent. An average in the mid-20s. No centuries. A reputation as a useful lower-order contributor who could change games with the ball but not consistently with the bat.

That narrative is dead. You do not make 113 not out from 154 for 9 — against an England attack featuring Atkinson, Overton, and Curran — and remain 'a useful contributor.' You do not break a 51-year World Cup record with your No. 11 and stay filed under 'bits-and-pieces.' Shadab Khan just played one of the greatest ODI innings ever seen, and everyone from Angelo Mathews to the PCB's social media intern knows it.

Pakistan are in the tri-series final on October 31. England have lost all three matches and are staring at an early elimination from their own tour. And somewhere in Lahore, Shadab Khan is probably still laughing about whatever he and Haris Rauf were really talking about out there.