New Zealand v England: 2nd Test, Day 3 - This is not an April Fool: England may win!

 

New Zealand v England: 2^nd Test, Day 3

This is not an April Fool: England may win!

April 1^st 2018

When England were 94-5 on the first afternoon, you would not have got very good odds on a New Zealand win. The dark forecasts of some fans that England would be whitewashed 2-0 looked all too likely to be fulfilled. It is Joe Root though who, today, will be shouting “April Fool”, having fooled most of the cricketing world into believing that his side would struggle to beat anyone right now. Suddenly and unexpectedly, England are right on top and, with two days to play – albeit two days that will be curtailed due to bad light – will hope to set New Zealand around 400 to win in four and a half sessions.

If you had added that this position would be set up by Stoneman and Vince, you would have been condemned for trying an obvious April Fool. Let us not be fooled though. Stoneman and Vince respect tradition and have not suddenly become Compton and Edrich: Stoneman pushes his highest Test score ever upwards – 52, 53, 56 and now, 60! At this rate he should score his maiden Test century in around his 40^th Test. If you look at Stoneman’s scores in this series – 11, 55, 35 & 60 – you would feel forced to say that he has been a success, averaging 40, but he continues to suffer from vertigo when in. If you consider reaching 15 as getting a start, he has done it in 13 of his 18 Test innings, but still averages only 30.2. Vince is just as bad. He has now played 13 Tests and averages under 25. He has reached 15 in his last eight innings, but passed 25 just twice. And his dismissals are almost identical ever time, prodding outside off. Partnership of 123, grinding England into a position of near impregnability and then both getting out within a few runs of each other.

It is fortunate that two other players who are short of runs in recent Tests took up the baton. There is a lot of chatter about Joe Root’s inability it covert 50s into 100s in Tests – a century here would set up a declaration and make a point. And, after a superb run, Dawid Malan’s run fountain has started to dry up. Since the start of the winter Tests, Joe Root has fallen in single figures just twice and made 6x50, but never got close to a century and has just one century in his last 13 Tests, as against 11x50. It is hard to criticise someone who has passed 50 twelve times in thirteen Tests, but such are the standards that Root has set, that people do wonder if the captaincy has just taken a little edge off his game. Dawid Malan was one of the great successes of the Ashes with 1x100 and 3x50 but, his last 5 innings have been 5, 2, 23, 0 & (now) 19*: another low score and the shine will be coming right off that Ashes success. Malan’s average is under 31 after twelve Tests and he knows that it has to increase, and rapidly, to cement his place.

That England are in this position is down to some excellent bowling from Stuart Broad. Bowling a fuller length and making batsmen play has made him look exponentially more threatening and a 6-for and his best figures for almost two years have been the reward. The opening bowlers on either side now have the first 23 wickets of the match. Never have the two pairs of opening bowlers bettered this number and, should Boult or Southee manage the next wicket to fall, the match will set a new record in Tests, beating the mark last set in 1912.

What England would like is to press on in the first session and stretch the lead from its current 231 to around 350. An hour in the afternoon at most, then, to a declaration. Ideally, they would like Root and Malan to set a foundation for Stokes and Bairstow to come in with a licence to enjoy themselves. Of course, in this topsy-turvy series of collapses and tail-end heroics, who knows what the reality will be like?

New Zealand v England: 1st Test Preview - Rehabilitation, or Further Humiliation?

 

New Zealand v England: 1^st Test Preview

Rehabilitation, or Further Humiliation?

March 21^st 2018

I have left this Blog fallow for two months. To be honest, the constant grind of yet more white-ball matches all got a bit too much. And, England reverted to type, winning the first and last matches of their T20 segment, in both cases, meaningless victories (one, a big win in a warm-up, the other too little, too late), before what was admittedly a cracker of a ODI series, with New Zealand where, against all logic, England, who are supposed to be vulnerable in low-scoring games and invincible in high-scoring ones, lost the two games in which the bat dominated and won the three in which the ball was king (at least, it was king when New Zealand were batting). Nothing to get very excited about there.

The two warm-ups for the Tests have been the McDonalds Happy Meal of cuisine: not even a Quarter Pounder to get your teeth into… two, two day games in which both sides would bat for 90 overs, no matter how many wickets they lost. It resulted in some slightly unusual scorecards – e.g. New Zealand XI, 287-13 – and Glenn Phillips failing both as an opener and as a #13 bat, but little else. Almost everyone got a bat, although James Vince, bless him, might be wishing that he had not, as his two innings have placed his name firmly on the list of endangered species… as a Test player, at least.

England have been left with a couple of fine conundra:

·       First – Can Ben Stokes play as a 4^th seamer? He has not bowled since the ODIs, having finished them with some back stiffness (as I have also had some for the last week, I can vouch for the fact that it is not funny). If he cannot, everything indicates that he will play as a specialist bat at #5, which moves everyone else down one place, but also means that an extra bowler is needed.

·       Second – What to do about #3?

England have many options. Some will make James Vince more nervous than others.

If an extra bowler is needed, Mark Wood and Craig Overton are the likely options. Mark Wood played in the first game, Craig Overton in the second. It is fair to say that Anderson and Wood were pretty devastating with the new ball, but that 30-5 and 103-6, became 357-7 and Mark Wood’s figures, by then, were looking a lot less impressive. In the second game, Craig Overton did what Craig Overton does: had a decent bowl, took a wicket, but did not look like running through the opposition, although he kept things tight. However, if either plays, a batsman will need to be sacrificed and that is most likely to be James Vince, with Dawid Malan likely to be pitched in at #3, as Ben Stokes will have taken his own regular spot.

Even if Ben Stokes can bowl – and the indications are that he will be able to – James Vince still cannot relax, because there is a case for replacing him with the impressive Liam Livingstone, who made the highest score for England in either game. However, a measure of just how bad the things were in the Unofficial Tests that the Lions played in the Caribbean is that his scores of 21, 1, 0 & 48 have marked him as one of the relatively successful batsmen in that train wreck. There was even a further option and that was playing Mason Crane, until he had to be sent home injured. Whatever the concerns about Moeen Ali’s form and confidence, which were to a degree alleviated in the second game, playing Mason Crane’s stand-in stuntman, Jack Leach, is not an option.

Whoever is selected – and careers are on the line, particularly in the case of Stoneman and Vince – New Zealand are going to be a formidable test at home. The gloomier predictions are that the series could be lost 2-0. The New Zealand pace attack is formidable in their own conditions and, in terms of depth, reckoned by many to be the best attack that New Zealand has every fielded. The series will be decided by which batting line-up is best able to resist the devastation that the opposition bowling attack can cause. For England, to have a top three who have struggled for runs, pitted against an attack willing to test them to the limit, is not a happy thought. It will be sink or swim but, if it is “swim”, at least no one will be able to suggest that Wagner, Boult and Southee have not been a real test for the batsmen and that they have scored easy runs against a popgun attack.

Alistair Cook has, apart from one big innings, struggled this winter. Mark Stoneman makes defiant fifties, but not enough of them, and has got out soon after reaching fifty each time. And, poor James Vince, makes pretty fifteens, twenties and, sometimes, thirties and then gets out in identikit fashion almost every time.

The feeling is that Alistair Cook’s double century in the 4^th Test should have re-ignited his appetite both for runs and for Test cricket. However, another poor series would undoubtedly start the speculation again. Cook is one of those players who either looks as if he could score tons of runs batting with a stick of rhubarb… or looks as if he *IS* batting with a stick of rhubarb. For one of the modern greats he has had a lot of dreadful runs of form. You only hope that whatever pep-talk Alice, his in-house guru and psychologist has given him over Christmas and the New Year, it has been brutally effective.

No one, bar a few air-heads, should want a player to fail. England fans – and maybe the management too – would be forgiven though for wanting James Vince to define himself one way of the other. He has two Test fifties – good, fighting ones too – but that is only one per ten Test innings: not enough. His last ten matches over three different formats, have been indicative of the enigma that is the Vince Phenomenon. Eleven innings, just two single-figure scores, but out between 10 and 26 no fewer than six times and no innings higher than 45. He gets in, looks world class and then gets out. Nick Compton knows that even two centuries in a series against New Zealand offers no career security, but one begins to hope that he will either be brilliant, ending the talk about his place for a few Tests at least, or incompetent, so that he can be dropped with no guilty feelings. What no one wants is for him to get, say, three starts and a “small” fifty, which will prove nothing one way or the other. The feeling though is that he is very lucky to be in New Zealand and is unlikely to figure in the summer series.

Mark Stoneman is in both a slightly better and a slightly worse situation. Better, because over the winter he has so far scored 5x50 and 1x100, although only two of the 50s have come in Tests. There is no question that Mark Stoneman can grit out brave runs. The bad news is that he has got out immediately after reaching 50 each time that he has done it in Tests. Worse, while no one can agree over a convincing replacement for James Vince, there is a queue of players lining-up behind Mark Stoneman. Nick Gubbins is scoring big runs pre-season. Sam Robson had a prolific start to the 2017 season. Keaton Jennings has shown that he can score Test runs and is Lions captain. And Haseeb Hameed is beginning to show some signs that he may finally be getting back a little form.

There are plenty of other sub-plots: how will Stuart Broad respond to the double challenge of being on 399 wickets and not getting the new ball? Will we see the Chris Woakes of last summer, or the Chris Woakes of the Ashes? Will Moeen Ali re-affirm his position after a poor Ashes series? Can Joe Root start turning 50s into centuries? Which set of bowlers will come out on top? And, not, but not least, how will New Zealand react to the pressure of being favourites for the series?

Ashes 2017/18: 1st Test, Day 1 - A Reality Check for Both Sides

The call was for Australia to blow England away with explosive pace.

The threat was to play on the terror of the batsmen and to end careers.

The reality was that none of the Australian bowlers threatened 90 mph and a slow pitch largely neutralised them.

For large parts of the day the bat dominated the ball and the biggest threat by far was from the spin of Nathan Lyon. If anyone had told Joe Root that the biggest danger on the first day of the Gabba Test would be an off-spinner getting prodigious turn, he would have laughed in your face. This does not look like a normal Gabba Test or a normal Gabba pitch.

And if anyone had told you that Australia’s biggest nightmare on the day would be James Vince batting and batting and batting until Australia must have despaired of removing what they had identified as the weakest link in the England batting, you would have been deemed almost certifiable. Only a brilliant piece of fielding could shift James Vince when a century was his for the taking.

After from Vince learning to count past 42, the great news was Mark Stoneman making a solid, unruffled 50 and Dawid Malan batting calmly to the Close. All three debutants. All three controversial picks, have repaid the faith of the selectors.

The bad news:

Another failure for Alistair Cook. Scores of 0, 15, 32, 70 and 2 have got Australia interested. He looks vulnerable. Again. We have written off Alistair Cook so many times, particularly after the 2006/07 Ashes, the 2013 Ashes and the 2013/14 Ashes and he has come back but, apart from that 2010/11 series in Australia, his Ashes record is notably poor. Has he still got the will to make big runs?

England lost the initiative in the evening. At 127-1, you could dream of maybe 240-2 at the Close. However, 127-1 became 163-4 and the gloss had gone off the day. It was a mini-collapse and Australia must have felt that one more wicket and England might fold for around 200. It did not happen because Malan and Moeen Ali dug in, although the massive slog for 6 off the previously miserly Nathan Lyon suggested that Moeen does not quite get this concept of “dig in”. In fact, after Root fell, a brief but violent counter-attack even forced Cummins out of the attack as successive overs from Cummins and Lyon went for 4, 8 & 8.

The fact remains though that with the new ball just 3 balls old and an early start on the ‘morrow, the Australians are announcing loudly that they hope to dismiss England for 260 and be batting well before Lunch: England fans will fear the return of the good old Calypso Collapso, already present on this tour; the Australians still think that one good kick and the edifice of England’s batting will collapse. The reasoning is that if Pat Cummins can get a head of steam with the new ball and get rid of any two of Malan, Moeen and Bairstow, England’s last four will not fancy inconveniencing him. Two wickets in the first three or four overs and England may not reach 250.

However, the more buoyant of England fans have looked at the close of play score and noticed that it is almost identical to the score early on the second morning in the Brisbane Test of 1986/87. England were 198-4 and had just lost two quick wickets before one Ian Terrance Botham teamed up with Philip de Freitas and the score rocketed past 400. Australia were dismissed cheaply twice and England won comfortably.

Could it happen again? Australia’s record of success of Brisbane is so long that you know that it has to end sometime, probably sooner rather than later. However, before England start putting the champagne on ice they need to see off the new ball in the morning and start to accelerate.

There is a window of opportunity here. In 2013/14 Australia were so hostile and the tail so defenceless because Mitch Johnson rarely had a heavy load: he averaged fewer than 18 overs per innings through the series and the batsmen made big scores to give him plenty of rest. Already Pat Cummins has bowled 19 overs, Mitch Starc is in his 20^th and Josh Hazlewood has bowled 18. Will Pat Cummins be able to retain his pace of he has to bowl 30 overs? Can Steve Smith risk him or Mitch Starc, both injury prone (in Cummins’s case, more injury plagued), breaking down? There is not much that can be offered as a plausible fifth bowler to rest the pace trio, or to buy a breakthrough were Australia to get stuck.

If Dawid Malan and Moeen Ali can bat for an hour the spearhead will be broken and runs will start to come more quickly. Bring in Jonny Bairstow and Chris Woakes against tired bowlers and maybe, just maybe, sights can be set on 350, 380, or even 400. That is the prize if these two not out batsmen can both push their innings deep into the morning session.

England fans can only hope.

England’s players will want to show that they are no pushover and make a point about the vacuity of some of the pre-match chat, using it as motivation.

Bat well, bat long tomorrow and the always fragile Australian morale will start to take a beating.

Collapse and there will be no way back.

England v Pakistan, 3rd Test, Tales of the Unexpected: Pakistan’s Bizarre Capitulation Sets up England’s Assault on Becoming #1

 

England v Pakistan

3^rd Test

Tales of the Unexpected: Pakistan’s Bizarre Capitulation Sets up England’s Assault on Becoming #1

August 9^th  2016

After the great Follow-On Cop-Out, we have had the Declaration Debacle. Both times the usual suspects accused Alistair Cook of everything from the most pusillanimous cowardice, to playing Father Christmas to Misbah’s team of happy warriors. Again, he was accused of throwing away the series by not knowing how to attack. And, again, events proved the critics completely wrong and Alistair Cook totally correct.

In fact, Alistair Cook is just one Test away from taking England to #1 in the ICC Test rankings: avoiding defeat may be enough to go top, winning guarantees it. Yet, despite results, it seems that Alistair Cook’s captaincy is fair game and vilified by (almost) everyone.

In contrast, the Pakistan team and their fans have been a happy bunch and, even as most people were reading the last rites, were convinced that their team could pull off an incredible win in both Tests that they have lost.

There is something very British about talking down your team, about being senselessly critical. We saw it before the 2012 Olympics too, where every story seemed to be a negative one, where the media gave acres of space to anyone who wanted to say that the Games would be an expensive disaster and that no one would turn up. Of course, although the Games had their faults (it is impossible to produce a perfect games), no one who was there can doubt that they were a great success perhaps, for a cricket fan, slightly tempered by the failure to include T20 cricket as a demonstration sport.

However, the vilification that has been poured on Alistair Cook’s handling of the side at times has gone past the reasonable. Like Andrew Strauss before him, he has received the labels “defensive” and “cautious” and nothing that he can do can change that. Even when proved to be absolutely correct in his decisions the pat answer is shot straight back “well he got lucky and did not deserve to get away with it”. When England almost pulled off an astonishing heist in the Oval Test of 2013, the plaudits were all for Michael Clarke for his attacking (read “totally mis-judged”) declaration, despite the fact that England scored more runs, far faster than Australia on that last day and it was not Alistair Cook who was time-wasting desperately at the end).

Alistair Cook belongs to the Clive Lloyd/Viv Richards school of captaincy. He knows that he has the weapons to win and backs his side to do it more often than not. Cook, like Clive Lloyd, does not take unnecessary risks. He likes to grind down his opponent, break his spirit. That much was shown by the way that in the 2^nd Test Pakistan were set a target that went far beyond anything reasonable. It was a West Indian trademark in the great years: even if the opposition was bowled out for 150 in the first innings, rarely enforce the Follow-On; bat again and toy with them – set them 450, 500, a target that they know that they have no hope of getting anywhere near.

Like those great West Indian teams, Alistair Cook was ruthless. He knew that the chances in the 2^nd Test of Pakistan surviving five sessions, or smashing the world record chase were just about zero. He backed his rested bowlers to do the job and they rewarded him by winning the match with a day to spare, despite a session being lost to rain.

At Edgbaston, in the 3^rd Test, the problem was a radically different one. For two days Pakistan had dominated totally on a surface so dead that it should have struggled to produce a result in six days, let alone five. Having been put in and batted at the one point in the match where there was significant help for the bowlers – and even then, it was not a great deal – and failed to get to 300, at the end of Day 2, England were on their backs and desperately trying to protect their collective throat from a mortal blow. At 257-2, with one ball of the day left, in reply to England’s 297, you could see a Pakistan lead of at least 150, probably 200, possibly even 250. England should have been batted out of the game and would have been likely to need to bat two days to save it. With Azhar Ali 139* and Younis settling-in nicely, it should have been curtains.

From that ball on though, just about everything went England’s way. Why did Azhar Ali guide an fairly inoffensive ball outside off straight to Alistair Cook from the last ball of the day? It confirmed the increasing suspicion that Chris Woakes has more than a touch of Ian Botham about him: things just happen around him, with no reasonable explanation. Those fans with longer memories will remember that Ian Botham’s introduction to Test cricket was fairly chastening: although he came back to take five wickets, his first spell was very roughly dealt with and his batting showed very little initially. Botham had the luck that the selectors stuck with him and repaid their faith once he started to believe in his own ability. In contrast, Chris Woakes has just had the odd Test over the last three years to make a case until finally given a run in the side: now it is hard to imagine the side without him.

The only moment when you could just imagine things going wrong was during the sixth wicket stand of 62: once it was broken, Pakistan seemed broken too. Only an annoying last-wicket stand got the lead over 100, but it was evident that the momentum had shifted.

When England’s first wicket pair got England in the black without great scares, the unthinkable started to become thinkable: might there be time for England to get far enough ahead and declare?

What was good to see was the way that Geoff Boycott purred over Alex Hales’s innings. Hales was patient. He started slowly, he avoided mistakes and he accelerated, giving England just the start that they needed. Hales is another player who is coming in for unfair opprobrium from the fans, who forget that he has had golden form in Tests and ODIs over the last few months, marred only by the lack of a maiden Test century. His first fifty of the series will not have silenced the doubters, but it at least eases the pressure on him and on the selectors.

Misbah seemed to get it all wrong. When Cook and Hales fell in three balls, early in Day 4, he switched quickly to all-out defence to stop England scoring. Perhaps he reasoned that it was the way to provoke a collapse, but it seemed to be more a fear of letting England set a target and thus exposing Pakistan to defeat. However, with fears about the ability of Vince and Ballance to perform at this level, a period of all-out attack might have let some runs flow, but could have also led to three or four wickets falling quickly. A century partnership steadied nerves and allowed James Vince another opportunity to count past 42 (an opportunity that, of course, he spurned): 9, 35, 10, 0, 16, 42, 18, 39 & 42 – in six of his nine Test innings he has got in, got set, looked good… and got out. Time is running out for him and the calls for Adil Rashid to replace him at The Oval are only getting louder, with even the England management publicly considering this option.

However, with every one of the top five making a contribution and the bowlers tiring, Pakistan were left incredibly vulnerable to a counter-attack. Once Bairstow and Moeen Ali had played themselves in, the bowlers were ripe for taking. After a relatively sedate start of a 50 partnership off 69 balls, the next hundred runs took 101 balls. It was Operation Annihilation again and, again, Yasir Shah was left to take the heat. 43-4-172-2. Seventy overs in the match for a return of 3-236: he might have won Pakistan the 1^st Test, but the contest has got more and more uneven since: match figures of 10-141 in that match, have been followed by combined figures of 4-502 in the 2^nd and 3^rd Tests. He has bowled 70 overs more than any other bowler in the series, averaging 32 per innings and is looking less and less effective. As the strike and stock bowler in a 4-man attack, he has been bowled into the ground and, more than anything, that mis-handling has turned the series. From a Pakistan point of view, their hopes of levelling the series and becoming the ICC’s #1 Test side depend on whether or not he can recover from such mega-abuse in time for the Final Test. If England bat and Yasir Shah is sent straight back into the attack, his stamina will be sorely tried.

The ultimate humiliation was for Yasir Shah to be given the first over in the morning, with a declaration in the offing and Alistair Cook being condemned for batting on, only to see twenty runs come off it: singles for Moeen and Bairstow, followed by 6 6 4 2 for Moeen. It was tantamount to a Pakistani declaration of surrender. Instead of taking 40 minutes out of the game, batting on in the morning cost just four overs, plus two for the change of innings.

Even after England had pulverised the Pakistani bowlers and allowed themselves almost a full day to bowl, there was no excuse for what followed.

At Lunch, Pakistan needed 264 to win from 62 overs, with nine wickets in hand and the ball was doing absolutely nothing for the bowlers. It was most definitely on. There was plenty of good bowling (Stuart Broad finished his second spell with the remarkable figures of 10-5-9-1). Plenty of pressure. Just nothing to suggest that wickets would fall. Not even Chris Woakes was making things happen.

And your spinner, your main hope of taking wickets, is short on confidence and many fans – and even some pundits – are asking why he is even in the side.

Cue Moeen Ali. A magic ball. An edge to slip. Thanks skipper! And the floodgates opened. 79-1 becomes a barely credible 151-9.

Why? There is no reasonable explanation. Collective panic?

The fact that the Pakistani last-wicket pair could put on 50 together with some comfort and, briefly, raise hopes that Pakistan could save the match, should put some of their colleagues to shame. There was nothing wrong with the pitch.

From 257-2 with one ball left of Day 2, Pakistan somehow contrived to lose their next 17 wickets for 294 runs. After the hammering at Old Trafford, to pass from the point of dominating the Test, to a humiliating defeat must hit Pakistani morale hard.

From being reviled after two, poor dismissals in the 2^nd Test and an anaemic bowling display, Moeen Ali has picked up another Man of the Match award and averages 58.7 with the bat and has 9 wickets at 39.3 with the ball in this series, at a strike rate of 54: better than Stuart Broad and only marginally inferior to Jimmy Anderson. It almost makes you wonder of he is strategically ineffective for a time to make batsmen take him too lightly and surrender their wickets to him!

The scene now shifts to The Oval, with the #1 ranking in Tests up for grabs. There are so many scenarios that they would take up a couple of pages of A4 but, a summary is this:

·        If England win the Test, they are guaranteed to go top of the ICC Test table.

o   Unless India win their last two Tests in the Caribbean, or Australia win the 3^rd Test in Sri Lanka, England will top the table if they avoid defeat at The Oval.

o   If Pakistan win the Test, they go top unless India win their last two Tests in the Caribbean, or Australia win the 3^rd Test in Sri Lanka and England will stay fourth in the table.

England v Pakistan, 2nd Test, Day 2: Déjà Vu from 2014?

 

England v Pakistan

2^nd Test

Day 2: Déjà Vu from 2014?

 July 23^rd  2016

The advantage of going on holiday for a week to a remote area of Northern Spain with no Internet was that the horribly inevitable spiral of England to defeat in the 1^st Test was limited to score updates on my smartphone. England were simply outplayed in every department and seemed to be carrying at least four passengers in their side and even then, briefly on the final day, suggested that they could win.

The response of the selectors has been to recall Stokes and Anderson, logically enough and, more unexpectedly, to call up Adil Rashid, but then disappoint by leaving him out on the morning when the adventurous option would have been to take in two seamers. Adil Rashid is no destroyer, but would add options to the attack and his form for England in the short forms of the game must have boosted his confidence enormously. It could be that the selectors are worried that they would be exposed if Anderson or Stokes were to break down, but the logical option was to play all four seamers as two are good batsmen too.

To no one’s great surprise, Jake Ball has been returned to Nottinghamshire and Toby Roland-Jones to England Lions duty. The rise of Chris Woakes has also meant that the selectors took the bull by the horns and released Steve Finn early (translation: he was never under serious consideration to play). Steve Finn’s travails since Graeme Smith decided, in 2012, that his occasional habit of knocking off the bails in his delivery constituted a grave distraction and thus managed to change the laws to eliminate this menace from the game, have been well documented. Steve Finn bowled like a demon in South Africa in the absence of Jimmy Anderson, but has since not looked like taking Test wickets. Of course, Finn responded with a display of real pace and menace in Middlesex’s T20 win against Hampshire after being released by England. Why he can look like a world-class pace bowler one night for Middlesex and like a county fourth seamer for England the week before, is one of those mysteries of cricket.

At Lord’s, Pakistan batted and made what, ultimately, was a match-winning total. The big difference between the sides was Misbah converting a start into a century – something that no England batsman could do – and the bowling of Yasir Shah, sticking to basics and making batsman after batsman commit suicide. This time though, it was Alistair Cook who won the Toss. And this time England made it count on a benign pitch against a friendly attack.

That England’s batting effort was not another disaster was down to Cook and Root getting stuck in and getting support from the lower middle order. Joe Root’s prodigious innings made up for another alarming failure from Alex Hales and another brief but pretty innings from James Vince, who has added yet another low score to his list of Test innings.

Vince’s sequence of scores – 9, 35, 10, 0, 16, 42, 18 – is starting to get seriously worrying. You can argue that Alex Hales had a similarly rocky start before coming good, but Hales at least had the consolation of a 50 against a much better attack than those that Vince has faced. The betting is that James Vince will get the 3^rd Test to make a score and then will make way for his replacement for the tour of India if he cannot. The beauty of Vince’s batting is making the pundit’s purr… as long as it lasts, which has generally been all too briefly before he gives it away. Alex Hales is a different problem. He made three important scores against Sri Lanka and has a string of ODI 50s and 100s since the South Africa Test series ended; Pakistan though are presenting him with a new problem that he is, at present, unable to solve. Hales though needs a score quickly to silence any premature chat about dropping him.

The England innings gave ammunition to those who have suggested that England’s batting is Root, Cook and nine honest triers. It ignores the fact that of Root’s six previous Test innings this summer, four have been not so commendably brief – dismissed in single figures – yet England have been winning, at least until the Lord’s Test. Even at Lord’s, after a Root failure that left the side 47-3 and sinking fast, there were times, particularly as Bairstow and Woakes crafted a careful 50 partnership, when Pakistan must have started to worry a little.

One of the problems at Lord’s was clusters of wickets falling, giving Pakistan momentum at critical moments. Here though, until the final slog that led to the declaration, there was no partnership smaller than the 25 that Hales and Cook put on together and no single-figure score. Even when a wicket fell, there was no great encouragement for the bowlers as the next man settled in. To score 589-8 at almost 4-an-over has made a major point, as have Yasir Shah’s figures of 54-6-231-1: the most expensive bowler apart from Wahab Riaz, unable to tie down an end or to take wickets. Pakistan’s Plan A was Yasir Shah. Their Plan B seemed to be abject surrender.

Sir Geoffrey talked about scoreboard pressure playing tricks on batsman, knowing that they were playing for a draw at best, but even then there was no excuse for what followed, particularly as the new ball attack was seen off comfortably. However, like Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, who had the holy terrors every time that Ian Botham took the ball – only he could induce batsmen to give their wickets away to the most innocent deliveries – Chris Woakes seems to be having the same effect on Asians in general. He only took more than one wicket in a match once in his first six Tests but, against Pakistan and Sri Lanka this summer, has 22 in just over 3 Tests at 12.3. None of his wicket-taking deliveries was particularly lethal, but Pakistani eyes lit-up and offered themselves as willing victims.

Pakistan have done what England did at Lord’s. So far their partnerships are 27, 16, 5, 5 & 4*. When a wicket falls, another has fallen quickly, giving the bowlers even more encouragement. It makes fatigue disappear as the bowler’s spell extends. It convinces the batsmen to come that there are non-existent demons in the pitch. And, if you follow social media, it convinces fans of the opposition that the pitch was specially prepared to disintegrate as soon as England declared (a mind game that almost always backfires on their own side, by creating a bunker mindset where everything is conspiring against you)!

Day 3 offers cloud, possibly some rain and favourable bowling conditions. It will be an almighty effort to take 16 more Pakistan wickets on what remains a very good batting surface but were Misbah to fall early, Pakistan could just fold.

It all gives a sense of déjà vu from 2014. Then, Sri Lanka were the first visitors and India the main course that England were expected to digest with some ease. Yes, we talked about how skilful the Indians seamers were, but they were not expected to be good enough to overcome England. India sent shockwaves through the country when they won the 1^st Test at a canter before suddenly falling apart. Are we seeing Pakistan do the same?