This, perhaps, is why we all do it. After a dour, heavy tour dominated by miserable eulogies for the death of Pakistan cricket, coloured by Pakistan's overbearing, heavy-handed response to the loss in the second Test, tarnished by players put through the wringer back home for not adequately performing the toughest job in cricket, there was a reminder of joy to be found in this very serious game after all.
All it took was a late-evening Edgbaston crowd, who thought they might have been on their way home by now, and one slightly bedazzled lad from northern Pakistan who was never meant to leave home anyway.
Razaullah was in Mardan in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region when he got a phone call, one he only noticed when he got up for morning prayers the following day. He had been told to get himself down to Lahore straightaway, and assumed he had been selected for the Asian Games in Japan.
His passport instead found its way to UK customs, and he found out he had been fast-tracked to England, and put on a flight to Birmingham.
It should have been a short debut. It was probably only the Midlands rain that saved Pakistan from the ignominy of a two-day finish, but by the third day, everyone was ready to read out the last rites. There were those with packed suitcases ready for the next train to London; one journalist even wheeled theirs into the press box. The crowd settled in for a leisurely Friday afternoon, one expected to see the series wrap up before the sun could be sent back down the sky. When Razaullah came in, Pakistan still needed eight runs to avoid an innings defeat, even if they had hung grimly on till the final session. By now, though, the innings was in palliative care.
Nothing, however, about Razaullah's debut had made sense; nothing, indeed about his career so far has.
This was a strapping 21-year-old just knocking about within Pakistan, bowling in excess of 90mph. Just days earlier, then head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed had said Pakistan simply didn't have pace in the country any more. Razaullah hadn't made his first-class debut until November last year, and barely played any part at the PSL. He also, mind you, had a half-century and century in a first-class game, the latter coming after his coach casually decided to let him open. He was so undercooked he wasn't ever in consideration for any Pakistan international squad. And, yet, so essential no one bowled more overs than him during England's first innings.
But even for all the responsibilities thrust upon Razaullah, making sense of the nonsense that is Pakistan cricket was surely a tricky one, and a burden he did not even attempt to bear.
Absence of limitations is probably the greatest luxury of all, and in a Pakistan side that has been constrained - by fear, opprobrium, and the threat of punishment - Razaullah played with the greatest luxury of all: the freedom to do what he wanted to.
He walloped his first ball down the ground, like an amateur boxer throwing a haymaker, assessing the threat level of his opponent. He sensed he had struck a glass jaw, and fear, if any existed, melted away.
The crowd, happy after a rewarding, competitive day's cricket, had settled into inebriated contentedness. They patronised Razaullah for a bit, cheering on a lad having a go. Cosy evening sunshine had finally broken out after a chilly day, and a little extra time at the cricket didn't seem the worst place to be.
Razaullah smashed Josh Tongue for an enormous six that guaranteed England would need to bat again, and a chorus of Sweet Caroline went up.
A few overs later, England had completely abandoned any semblance of a conventional plan that had worked for five and three-quarters of Pakistan's batting in England. Gus Atkinson banged in multiple bouncers and threw in the odd full delivery; Razaullah smashed three of them back into the stands. The lead was now 27, and the shadows were lengthening. As it threatened a fourth day, England's football favourite Wonderwall, began to ring through Edgbaston.
Razaullah, who understands barely a word of English, only picked up on the general mood, but it was one he had begun to drink in. By his own account, he likes to enjoy life. Just the day before, Jofra Archer had signed off Razaullah's 23-over innings with a six; here, the young man paid Archer back with two bigger ones, getting him up to the fastest half-century for a debutant in Pakistan's history. Even Joe Root couldn't help crack a smile, and as Archer turned sourly away, Razaullah flashed his million-dollar grin, his carved jawline and Aussie-style mullet adding verisimilitude to the fairy tale unfolding in Birmingham.
It was a nice evening out sportingly cheered on by the majority England crowd, but for Pakistan, something more sincere felt like it was being manifested. Pakistan - and not just its cricket - has felt to some like a stifling place of late, where opinions are bottled up and uncomplicated joy can be scarce. But here, at the crease, was the best of Pakistan cricket, an old grand-wizard in Mohammad Abbas, with his gentle nurturing touch, helping lay the groundwork for the young prodigy to create lifelong memories before time in this side has had a chance to jade him. It was as if no one but these two mattered in Pakistan cricket, like an intimate evening when you allow yourself to forget that a bleaker outside world also exists.
Abbas finally fell after 121 had been added, but he had shielded his young charge long enough to continue believing in magic. Razaullah leapt down the ground and whipped Dan Lawrence for perhaps the most flamboyant six of all; it took him to nine sixes, equalling the all-time record for a debutant. Not that it mattered for Razaullah, who did not even know how many sixes he had ultimately hit, let alone what the record was.
In time, there will be attempts to rewrite Razaullah's selection as a stroke of analytical genius or administrative foresight. There will be those who try and claim him as their own, or use him to offer proof of the rude health in which the game they continue to manage is in Pakistan.
All of it should be given the short shrift it deserves because at its heart, it is Razaullah himself who instinctively epitomised what Pakistan cricket has always been about, a kind of untamed joy that is yet to be subdued, and an unconventional freedom whose inevitable shackling has not yet come to pass.
It was necessary to talk about Razaullah on day one because of what he might become in an ideal world, and important to talk about him on day two because of what it felt like he would inevitably become in Pakistan cricket's current environment. On day three, it was inevitable we would talk about Razaullah for that characteristically Pakistani joy he lit up a cricket ground with, and the inevitability of its ephemeral nature today. At a time Pakistan cricket grapples with its loss of identity, the one thing that can light up Pakistan cricket is a player who has not yet had the misfortune of having their lights dimmed by it just yet.