Alec Stewart's Diary

Writing shortly after England's historic victory in Karachi to clinch the series against Pakistan, Alec Stewart reflects on the final day's momentous happenings and looks back on a successful tour.

It was an unbelievable win. You lose the toss, they're 290-odd for three at the end of the first day and in the driving seat. But gradually we got ourselves back into the game and we got more into it as each day went on.

Obviously Atherton was brilliant in the first innings, again well supported by other people. We still had a deficit of 17 after that innings and not a lot of time left in the game.

The crucial wicket in the second innings was the dismissal of Inzy [Inzamam-ul-Haq] on the fourth night [bowled by Giles]. To get Inzy out, who is probably their best player and scores freely, meant that they did not know whether to stick or twist the following morning. We basically said if we got early wickets you never knew what could happen - and the rest is history.

I was able to run out Waqar that morning. Afridi had been blocking the ball for a while, he'd hit a couple of good shots down the ground, then went for a big hit and hit Tres [Marcus Trescothick] in a well-padded area, to be polite, then I shot off after the ball. I was aware they were looking to run - yes, no, yes - and I picked it up and threw down the stumps. It was an important wicket because Waqar's no mug so I was pleased with that - then I checked Tres was all right but it was only a bruise.

We had to score at around four an over from the first ball. It was not going to be easy. No one else had scored at that rate in the match but we said we'd go for it because, first of all, we had nothing to lose. If you get off to a good start you can bat your way to victory.

We were also aware it was going to get dark later, so we were in control of whether we could come off for bad light - if we'd got seven down and it was dark we could come off. As it turned out it did get dark and they slowed the over rate down, but Steve Bucknor said to Moin that it was his fault for bowling a slow over rate, and we could stay out there and see it through to the finish.

We always said Thorpe was a great pressure player. He's a tremendous one-day player and a great Test cricketer but here he rolled both roles into one. It was down to him and Graeme Hick, who hasn't got the runs he wanted on this tour, but here he was given a free role and was pushed up the order to number four. He took on the responsibility and did everything bar hitting the last few runs.

I've never seen international cricket played in that light. It was probably as dark as that famous win of Lancashire against Gloucestershire when David Hughes hit those winning runs. We were offered the light at about a quarter past five but there was no way we were coming off. The game finished at ten to six in conditions you wouldn't expect to see too often in Test cricket.

We've all played club cricket - I used to play 15 eight-ball over competitions which used to start at about 6 o'clock and would finish about nine and we wouldn't have played in light like that for club games.

If it was up to me I'd make it a rule now that if floodlights are at the ground they should be used, both for the benefit of the paying customers and for the players, whether they're batting or bowling. I think that's a law that will probably, or possibly, come in.

But on this occasion it was credit to the umpires - and credit to England for a historic and brilliant win.

When we left to come over here, most people and various 'experts' expected us to come unstuck. We hadn't played in this part of the world since '87, none of us on this tour had played Test cricket here and the conditions were foreign to us, but we played very, very good cricket.

I think we surprised not just the Pakistanis but everyone watching, whether it be here or back home, with the quality of cricket that we played. It was a great team win.

There were a lot of people who made great strides forward. You could mention Ashley Giles who came over with just one or two Test matches under his belt, and he's gone from strength to strength. Craig White has carried on where he left off in the summer but, for me, Michael Atherton has been quite outstanding. He played tremendously well last summer and he's carried on and improved on that form he showed and thoroughly deserves the runs and the records he's broken while he's been out here.