Half of their home Tests. After going four years and 11 Tests at home without a win - the longest streak for the traditional top eight Test sides this century - Pakistan's bar was set low: at least win the games where they won the toss and consequently enjoyed the best of batting conditions. It left them even more vulnerable when the coin landed the other way, but then again, they'd won four of 11 tosses in those Tests, losing two games and drawing the others.
Pakistan's decision to play on a used track in Multan a year to the day ago birthed the spin tracks that have become an identifiable feature of Test cricket in the country of late. It is an idea they pushed to its caricatured limit in a series against West Indies, where the surfaces deteriorated so much Pakistan captain Shan Masood called the conditions "too extreme". But, whatever the criticism of Pakistan's methods, there is no doubting their effectiveness: Pakistan have won each of the Tests where they called correctly at the toss, plus one against England after losing it. After 11 Tests without a win, four of the last five home Tests have ended in triumph.
For all the defiance that Pakistan have outwardly projected about there being no good or bad ways to win Test matches, this was a tactic borne out of necessity than choice, and one that still provokes debate among the media and fans alike. Over the past week in Lahore, when Azhar Mahmood came to talk to the media, he had to fend off questions about whether Pakistan had given up on any hopes of winning away Test matches at all; they have lost their last five. Masood, meanwhile, was asked whether fast bowling would die off in the next generation with Pakistan stacking their line-up with spinners to exploit the turn on rapidly disintegrating surfaces. The fans have enjoyed the sugar hit of the wins, but like all sugar hits, also worried about the long-term consequences for the game's health.
It all detracted from what happened in Lahore this week: Pakistan, who finished bottom of last year's WTC, beat South Africa, who won the whole thing. And while they did so on a palpably spin-heavy wicket, it was by no means too far removed from Test strips prepared everywhere across the subcontinent these days.
Though Pakistan's 161-run second wicket stand before tea on the first day established a beachhead from which they kept South Africa at bay for the next three days, they could never quite deliver the landing blow they managed fairly quickly against England in Multan last year, or the West Indies in January. South Africa gritted their way to a first-innings response that kept them in touch, and their fourth innings outscored Pakistan's third, the first time that has happened since Pakistan turned to spin tracks at home.
That, partially, is down to South Africa being a better Test side than England, West Indies, or for that matter, Pakistan in most conditions. But at the same time, the Lahore wicket refused to open up to Noman Ali and Sajid Khan with the same alacrity as Multan and Pindi have over the past year. It required Shaheen Shah Afridi to break open the game for Pakistan in the fourth innings, initially to snap the burgeoning partnership between Tony de Zorzi and Ryan Rickelton, Pakistan's bete noires in the first innings, on the fourth morning, and later to polish off the last three wickets with a reversing ball, coming around the wicket to the right-handers to bring the ball in late.
For South Africa, too, there was encouragement when they turned to the elite fast bowling of Kagiso Rabada, whose figures belied the menace he carried both with new ball and old. It took him just three balls into the Test to find swing into the right-hander Abdullah Shafique and get his first wicket, and he was far more dangerous than any of South Africa's trio of finger spinners for the first two sessions. He repeatedly threatened early through Pakistan's second innings, just missing out on snaring Babar Azam for a duck with HawkEye deemed a lovely middle-stump ball seaming away to be going too high. Later, he would get his man with a vicious nipbacker. Wiaan Mulder bowled just two and was never going to have the same impact, but Pakistan appear to want quality swing bowling to count for something in Tests at home.
If anything, South Africa, perhaps spooked by what they saw in Multan in January, outflanked Pakistan in the spin department, feeling three outright fingerspinners. Pakistan, who have spent this time of Test drought gently finessing their home formula, went just with their trusty two of Noman and Sajid. Instead, they tried to manufacture a role for their historical strength - pace bowling combined with reverse swing - and fielded both Afridi and, for his first first-class game in two years - Hasan Ali.
Masood called them Pakistan's "best exponents of reverse swing" when the ball ages, which it does fairly quickly on the strips Pakistan prepare. While Hasan was a statistical footnote in this game, bowling ten wicketless overs across the two innings, Masood strongly hinted he would front up alongside Afridi in Pindi next week once more. Spinroads may be their bread and butter for now, but Gaddafi against South Africa perhaps also began to illuminate an eventual path to a more harmonious balance, a quiet transition from a home season whose success hinges on the flick of a copper disc on a patch of underwatered mud.