THERE is a version of this story that is only about numbers — nine tours, one series win, sixty-eight years. And then there is the real story: of a rivalry that has produced some of Test cricket’s most extraordinary individual performances, its cruellest finishes, and, on one unforgettable afternoon in Dominica, a piece of history that took Pakistan six decades and eight of its greatest cricketers to finally deliver.

Pakistan return to the Caribbean this month for a two-Test series in Tarouba (25-29 July) and Port-of-Spain (2-6 August) — their 10th visit since Abdul Hafeez Kardar’s side first landed there in 1957-58. In between, there has been a 337 that remains one of the great acts of defiance in the sport’s history, a 365 that once stood as the highest score ever made in a Test match, Imran Khan’s 48 wickets in eight Tests, Javed Miandad’s back-to-back centuries, a Grenada beach that briefly became more famous than any cricket ground, two identical one-wicket losses separated by 21 years that still make Pakistani supporters wince, and a memorable farewell to two of the greatest Pakistan cricket servants.

This is the rewind.

1957-58: Baptism by Sobers, survival by Hanif

Pakistan’s first tour of the Caribbean might have broken a lesser side. The West Indies won the five-Test series 3-1, and along the way handed out a lesson in what Test cricket at its most ruthless looked like: Garfield Sobers made 365 not out in the third Test, in Jamaica — a world record at the time — while Pakistan slumped to an innings defeat in the same match.

But it is Hanif Mohammad’s response, earlier in the series, that Pakistan still talks about. His 337 in the first Test, in Barbados, spanned 970 minutes at the crease — Hanif himself always insisted it was 999 — and turned a young batter into a national institution overnight.

Hanif finished the series with 628 runs, and Fazal Mahmood took 20 wickets with the ball, but the touring side’s proudest moment came right at the death: an innings victory in the fifth Test, in Port of Spain, ensured Pakistan did not leave their maiden Caribbean series without at least one win. It was a small thing to hang an entire tour’s pride on. It was also entirely in character for what this rivalry would become.

1976-77: The pace battery arrives

Nearly two decades passed before Pakistan returned, and the West Indies that greeted them in 1976-77 was a different animal. Two uncapped fast bowlers, Colin Croft and Joel Garner, made their Test debuts on this tour and immediately announced themselves as generational talents — the beginning of an era of West Indian pace bowling that would terrorise the world for the next fifteen years.

Pakistan, to their credit, refused to be bullied.

Wasim Raja was the find of the series — 517 runs, a century, five half-centuries, and an unbeaten 117 in the first Test alone, built on a defiant last-wicket stand of 133 with Wasim Bari that turned a certain defeat into a draw. Majid Khan top-scored for the tour with 530 runs, including a rescue-act 167 in Guyana after Pakistan were forced to follow on. And in the fourth Test, back in Port of Spain, captain Mushtaq Mohammad delivered the all-round performance of his career — 121 and 56 with the bat, five for 28 and three for 69 with the ball — to level the series at 1-1. It did not last: West Indies won the decider in Kingston by 140 runs, with Imran Khan’s six for 90 not enough to prevent it.

The West Indies won the series 2-1, but Pakistan left the Caribbean having shown they would not simply be flattened by the fast bowling revolution unfolding in front of them.

1987-88: The nearest of near-misses

If there is one tour Pakistan fans still replay in their heads wondering what might have been, it is this one. Imran Khan came out of retirement to lead the side, and in the first Test, at Bourda in Georgetown, produced a performance for the ages: 11 wickets in the match, backed by Javed Miandad’s first Test century against the West Indies, sealed a nine-wicket win that ended West Indies’ decade-long unbeaten run on home soil. For a touring side, breaking a fortress that had stood since 1978 was as sweet as Caribbean cricket gets.

Then came the collapse of the dream. In the second Test, Pakistan needed one more push to seal an outright series win; instead, last man Abdul Qadir had to survive five deliveries from Viv Richards just to salvage a draw, finishing 31 runs short of what would have been a historic triumph.

The third Test, in Barbados, was worse — West Indies had slipped to 207 for eight in a 266-run chase before Jeff Dujon (29 not out) and Winston Benjamin (40 not out) put on an unbroken 61 for the ninth wicket to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Adding insult to injury, a furious Qadir punched a spectator on the boundary and paid US$1,000 to avoid facing charges.

Javed Miandad finished the series with 282 runs and two centuries — a sharp contrast to three runs in one Test on the previous tour; Imran Khan took 23 wickets. None of it was quite enough. The series ended 1-1, and Pakistan have spent the years since wondering how different history might look had two or three umpiring decisions gone their way.

1992-93: A tour cricket would rather forget

Not every chapter of this rivalry belongs on a highlight reel. Wasim Akram’s first series as Pakistan captain was overwhelmed almost entirely by events off the field: Wasim himself, along with Waqar Younis, Aqib Javed and Mushtaq Ahmed, was arrested in Grenada on a charge of constructive possession of marijuana, a scandal that eclipsed a 2-0 series defeat in which Pakistan were comfortably outplayed.

Yet buried inside the wreckage of the tour was the first sign of a genuine great. In Antigua, in only the 13th innings of his career, Inzamam-ul-Haq scored the first of what would eventually become 25 Test centuries. Nobody watching that day could have known they were looking at the man who would one day be Pakistan’s most prolific run-scorer in the format.

Basit Ali (222 runs) and Waqar Younis (19 wickets) were the other bright spots in an otherwise miserable tour.

1999-2000: The wound that would not close

For sheer heartbreak, nothing in this rivalry — perhaps nothing in Pakistan’s Test history — quite matches Antigua, 2000. Moin Khan’s side had done everything right: after a rain-affected draw in Guyana and a high-scoring stalemate in Barbados, Pakistan arrived in Antigua with the series still to be won and a genuine chance to become the first Pakistan side ever to claim a series victory in the Caribbean.

What followed was cricket at its cruellest. Chasing a target in the fourth innings, West Indies captain Jimmy Adams and last man Courtney Walsh put together an unbeaten last-wicket stand of 19 to steal a one-wicket win. Two poor umpiring calls — an inside edge off Adams, a bat-pad shout against Walsh — went against Pakistan, and Saqlain Mushtaq fumbled a simple run-out chance that would have ended the match.

Wasim Akram finished the series with 15 wickets and Inzamam-ul-Haq top-scored with 295 runs, but none of it mattered. A generation of Pakistan supporters have never quite forgiven that final session.

2004-05: Redemption on Lara’s home turf

Pakistan arrived in the Caribbean without their captain — Inzamam-ul-Haq was serving a one-match ban for dissent shown against India in Bengaluru — and paid heavily for it. West Indies won the first Test, in Barbados, by 276 runs, and Brian Lara used the occasion to complete his 30th Test century, passing Don Bradman’s tally of 29 in the process.

Inzamam returned for the second Test, in Jamaica, and delivered exactly the response his side needed: scores of 50 and 113, backed by Younis Khan’s 106 and Shoaib Malik’s 64. Danish Kaneria took five wickets in the West Indies’ second innings as Pakistan bowled the hosts out for 143 and won by 136 runs to level the series.

It was a tour that swung from humiliation to redemption inside a fortnight — as concentrated a dose of bitter and sweet as this rivalry has ever produced.

2010-11: A quiet chapter, evenly shared

By the time Misbah-ul-Haq’s side arrived in 2010-11, the gulf between the two teams had narrowed considerably.

Pakistan lost the first Test, in Guyana, on a substandard pitch that Saeed Ajmal’s 11 wickets in the match could not quite make up for. But the second Test, in St Kitts, belonged to Pakistan: half-centuries from Azhar Ali and Umar Akmal, a maiden century for Misbah as captain, and 135 from Taufeeq Umar built a total that West Indies could not chase, with Abdur Rehman and Ajmal sharing the wickets to seal a series-levelling win.

Unremarkable by the standards of what came before and after, but a sign that Pakistan could now compete with West Indies on close to equal terms.

2016-17: The one that finally arrived

Every rivalry needs a moment that justifies the whole history leading up to it. For Pakistan in the West Indies, this was it. Sixty years after Hanif Mohammad’s 337 first put Pakistan on the map in the Caribbean, Misbah-ul-Haq’s side did what Hanif himself, Mushtaq Mohammad, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Inzamam-ul-Haq — eight of the greatest cricketers Pakistan has produced — had never managed across six previous tours: they won a Test series in the West Indies.

The series had everything. Younis Khan became the first Pakistan batter to reach 10,000 Test runs during the opening Test, in Kingston, which Pakistan won comfortably. West Indies hit back to win the second Test, in Barbados, with Misbah agonisingly falling for 99 for the second time in the series. Then, in the decider in Dominica, with Roston Chase scoring an unbeaten 101, Yasir Shah — who finished the series with 25 wickets — bowled last man Shannon Gabriel with the very last ball of the penultimate over to seal a 101-run win.

Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan, playing their final Test series, could not have scripted a more fitting farewell. Pakistan had finally, after 60 years, cracked the code.

2021-22: History, cruelly, repeats itself

And then, as if the rivalry could not resist one final twist, it happened all over again.

In the first Test at Sabina Park in August 2021, Hasan Ali dropped Kemar Roach on 19; Roach went on to make an unbeaten 30, guiding West Indies to a one-wicket win eerily identical to Antigua 2000 — the same margin, the same late-order nerve, the same sinking feeling for Pakistan, who had chances to close it out and let every one of them slip.

The difference this time was how quickly Pakistan answered.

Rather than let the wound fester for two decades, they responded in the very next Test, at the same ground, with a commanding 109-run win built on Fawad Alam’s 124 and Shaheen Shah Afridi’s 10 wickets in the match. The series finished 1-1 — bitter and sweet delivered, this time, within the space of a single fortnight.

Looking ahead

Nine tours have given Pakistan one series win, several performances that belong among the greatest in the sport’s history, and at least two defeats that will be argued over for as long as people talk about this rivalry. As the side leaves for Tarouba next week for the 10th instalment, they carry every bit of that history with them — the standard set in Dominica in 2017, and the ghosts of Antigua and Sabina Park that they will be desperate not to revisit.

Whatever happens over the coming fortnight, it will, in time, take its place in this same bitter-sweet ledger.