England v Pakistan 4th Test, Day 3: Final Test Syndrome Strikes Again

 

England v Pakistan

4^th Test, Day 3

Final Test Syndrome Strikes Again

August 14^th  2016

Some time on Day 4 Pakistan will win this Test and continue England’s bizarre run of failing to win final Tests. This has cost them time and time again: series wins became shared series and narrow series defeats have turned into heavy ones. This time it will cost England the chance to become #1 in the ICC Test table, but the points lost over the last three years through lost Final Tests are so many that England would have been runaway leaders in the table now if each of those defeats had been a draw instead.

It has been a wonderful series of twists and turns. A shared series is probably no less than Pakistan deserve.

Previous series going back as long as I can remember – and that goes back to series in the 1970s – have often been bad-tempered. The rights and wrongs of the different incidents are now lost in the mists of time, but they have summed over the years to produce a bad blood that has almost invariably been carried-over to the next series. Some incidents were seemingly trivial at the time: the bat-pad catch that David Constant turned down, the five penalty runs for ball tampering, but exploded when the players reached the dressing-room and thought about what had happened. Others were seemingly down mainly to cultural and linguistic difficulties, but had no place on a cricket field at all. No England captain should abuse an umpire; however, to have done something that was perfectly legitimate within the laws and to be called a cheat, by the umpire of all people, in a series where the umpiring was a little erratic, to put it kindly, was a fairly substantial and unnecessary provocation – what is worse, neither player nor umpire were sanctioned!

Pakistani players have often felt slighted in the past and, in hindsight, with good reason. When you develop a new method of bowling – reverse swing in this case – that no one understands, or can cope with, the temptation to cry foul is huge, but the consequences dire when you cannot demonstrate foul play and the bowlers know that they have done nothing wrong. You then go for the return series determined to get some of your own back, pushing the limits of fair play in a sense of righteous indignation and the cycle goes on.

Misbah-ul-Haq has managed to break with the cycle. Although there have been some wobbles – the Alex Hales dismissal in the first innings did stress things a little – the spirit has been good. Neutral umpires and DRS ensure that neither side can feel credibly that the umpiring has been biased one way or the other and when an injustice is done, it can usually be rectified. No system is perfect and no system can ever be made perfect [sorry, if you do not want DRS until it is perfect, you will never get it], but DRS massively reduces the uncertainties.

Much is made of the ways that DRS can be spoofed, or is terribly unreliable. You can make a lot of the fact that the DRS system that you are using was not made by you, or in your country and thus must be biased against you. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to think of ways to reduce the heat signal from an edge for HotSpot, or the acoustic signal for Snicko, but that same edge that you are hiding, will save you from being given LBW: by trying to avoid being given out caught when you edged, you are increasing your chances of being given out LBW when that same edge will fail to be detected (think “bat-pad” chances, or LBWs with bat and pad close together) – in other words, your net gain is likely to be small. DRS giveth and DRS taketh away! And if the umpires are allowed to inspect the bat as they inspect the ball, even such options for cheating the system will be largely eliminated. The fact remains though that to it is now almost impossible to accuse the umpiring of being biased without looking a bit of an idiot. When neither side can feel legitimately aggrieved, it does help to diffuse tensions!

Both sides have made a big effort to play in the right spirit and Misbah should take great credit for the way that he has ensured that his side has been a band of happy warriors. The press-up celebrations have been great PR, if a little galling at times to the opposition and such is the atmosphere created, that even Jimmy Anderson who, like many medium-pacers, is inclined to get a little worked up when the adrenaline flows, has felt obliged to apologise spontaneously to the umpires for his behaviour and not before time.

The legacy of the 2006 and 2010 series in England was shameful. The 2016 series will be remembered instead for some amazing twists and turns and some quite wonderful cricket between two well-matched teams that played in the spirit of cricket.

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 4: Operation Destruction Completed Successfully

 

England v Pakistan

2^nd Test

Day 4: Operation Destruction Completed Successfully

July 25^th  2016

The petulant whining about the non-enforcement of the Follow-On has been shown to be as ridiculous as it was irrelevant. It was all a bit wet, which was the one thing that the weather was not: the rain, which the critics assured us even this morning would wipe a huge swathe out of play both today and tomorrow, did not turn up. The BBC weather forecaster had promised in the morning that the weather would be fine and, like Alistair Cook, was vindicated. Despite losing a session to rain, England sealed a massive win with almost four sessions to spare.

Pakistan’s English-language Dawn newspaper was vitriolic in its ridicule of England’s decision not to enforce the Follow-On. This might have been out of frustration as much as anything. They would have known that Pakistan’s one, slim hope of survival was to Follow-On (against an attack that would soon be a bowler short) and watch them tire progressively on a flat pitch. It would only have taken a single stand. Instead, England took to their task to grind down Pakistan’s own 4-man attack and destroy the confidence of Yasir Shah very seriously. Just look at the figures for the conclusion of the England innings:

·        86 runs from the last 10 overs of the innings.

·        75 runs added from 9 overs in 40 minutes in the morning.

·        A partnership of 105 in 85 balls (14.1 overs) at 7.4 runs per over between Cook and Root to bring on the declaration.

The fans predicted confidently that Pakistan would bowl wide, to a defensive field and slow scoring to a crawl, taking time out of the game. As it was, they seemed too utterly defeated to do anything about the England scoring rate, which accelerated steadily as the declaration approached, despite putting seven men on the boundary.

Shah’s match figures are an eye-watering 63-6-284-1: unable in this Test either to take wickets, or to slow down the scoring on a pitch on which England seriously considered playing two spinners (for comparison, the much-criticised Moeen Ali, had match figures of 26.2-1-131-5).

As an exercise in demoralisation it recalls Mike Gatting’s destruction of Laxman Sivaramakrishnan in India in 1984/85, when after winning the 1^st Test almost single-handed with 12 wickets, he took an expensive 6-for to give him a third consecutive 6-for in an innings, in the first innings of the Second Test, before Gatting destroyed his confidence so totally that he was never again effective, even at First Class level.

Misbah-ul-Haq, who is proving to be a diplomat, as well as a fine captain and a generous opponent, admitted that the pitch did little and that Pakistan should have scored 400 in the first innings and plenty in the second innings, but were short on confidence. What the Pakistani confidence levels will be like now, after this horrible pummelling, does not bear thinking of. Pakistan will look at how no fewer than nine batsmen passed 20 in the Test, yet only Misbah reached 50 and he was dismissed for 52 in the first innings.

Needing to survive 186 overs, Pakistan were 25-2 in the eleventh over – from there, there was no way back. Mohammed Hafeez and Younis Khan gave some hope that the game could be taken into the final day, but the danger of a brain-fade was always there and the desire to hit Moeen Ali out of the stadium did for both of them. Moeen Ali’s lack of success in recent Tests turned out to be his biggest weapon, as batsmen failed to treat him with sufficient respect and threw their wickets away in a macho attempt to emulate Misbah’s treatment of him from the 1^st Test. Those match figures of 5-131 will do Moeen’s case no harm, even if he was, inevitably, upstaged by Joe Root’s first over of the series (a wicket maiden).

Even the bad news for England may turn out to have a silver lining. Ben Stokes looks to have done real damage to his calf muscle, but his likely absence will allow England to give a game to one of a long list of players fighting to get into the attack. With Edgbaston unlikely to favour spin, the temptation to play Adil Rashid will be resisted, instead, England will have to decide the relative merits of: Wood (back playing for the Lions and bowling well), Finn (surely he cannot be brought back so soon), Plunkett (who only lost his place due to injury), Ball (who did nothing wrong in the 1^st Test and looked the part) and possibly even Chris Jordan (back from the IPL and bowling with vim and vigour). Plenty of bowlers are banging on the door and shouting for a chance to play.

Personally, I would go for Plunkett, with his extra pace and bounce, to shake up some nervous Pakistani batsmen, as the word is that probably Mark Wood has not bowled enough overs to be ready for a 5-day Test (always assuming that a Test goes into a fifth day in this series).

A couple of days ago I suggested that this series was starting to resemble England v India in 2014. I stick by that suggestion. We will see if it still looks that way after the 3^rd Test. Either way, the series is now guaranteed to be live for the Final Test, at The Oval, starting on August 11^th.

England v Pakistan, 1st Test, Day 2: Something Odd is Happening at Lord’s

 

England v Pakistan

1^st Test

Day 2: Something Odd is Happening at Lord’s

 July 16^th  2016

The script for this match said that no side has taken 20 wickets on a dead Lord’s surface all season. The surface looked a good one for batting and Pakistan’s efforts yesterday seemed to suggest that a first innings score of around 450 would be par.

In other words, accept a rather boring draw and move on to Old Trafford.

Barring the intervention of the weather, or of Alistair Cook, who is courting a one match ban for a slow over-rate, managing to slow the England over rate still further to a level that the 1980s West Indians would have envied, there will be a result, quite probably on the fourth day.

From 282-4 late on the first day, 13 wickets have fallen for the addition of 310 runs. First Pakistan and then England have made batting look high risk. The fact that there has also been some pretty poor bowling at times makes the clatter of wickets even harder to understand. It is the sort of situation that would make Marvin the Paranoid Android of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" complain "Oh dear! Reality is on the blink again!"

Right now, there are two differences between the side: the first is that Misbah-ul-Huq has been the only player able to make a major score (Misbah’s 114 trumped Cook’s 81) and the second is that Yasir Shah has sown seeds of doubt where only certainty should have existed. Although Chris Woakes’s 6-70 is better on paper, Shah’s 5-64 has turned the game.

What possessed Joe Root to take a wild swing and sky a catch when he and Cook had put on 110 and were making batting look easy, we do not know. Up until then the Pakistan bowling was poor and, when the bowlers did induce a mistake, the fielding was worse. Once Root had committed hari-kiri when a major score was there for the taking, Yasir Shah decided that his best course was not to rely on his fielders: three LBWs and Jonny Bairstow bowled. Mohammad Amir took his cue from Yasir Shah and removed Cook bowled off the inside edge: when you cannot rely on your wicket-keeper or fielders to catch anything, bowleds and LBWs are the best recourse.

It should not have been this way. In eleven overs and four balls Pakistan had gone from a commanding 282-4 to a scarcely credible 316-9. Thoughts of 450 evaporated like referendum pledges, although Pakistan’s last wicket pair were still able to add what may ultimately be a match-winning 23 runs.

When England batted, all the doubts returned. Alex Hales’s leaden feet were more the Hales of the South African Tests than the swashbuckling warrior who battered Sri Lanka. Vince came, had Michael Vaughan purring at his artistry and went, once again, when looking set: 70 runs in 5 innings have convinced no one that he is the batsman that England need. Gary Balance got a superb ball, but all the talk will be of how his failure proves that the selectors were wrong to bring him back. And Moeen Ali, who owed England some runs, looked awfully unlucky to fall with umpire’s call on point of impact and on hitting the stumps, plus a spike on Snicko that the TV umpire thought was caused possibly by his spikes scraping the ground just at the moment that ball passed bat. Lest we forget, Jake Ball was pretty fortunate to get Azhar Ali yesterday so, as usual, these things have evened-up.

Each time a batsman seemed to be getting things under control, a wicket fell. The upshot is that, with Chris Woakes playing calmly and Stuart Broad hanging on, England are 86 behind on a pitch expected to favour the bowlers in the fourth innings and desperately need to reach parity tomorrow morning. If they are to do it, Chris Woakes will almost certainly have to surpass his best Test score by some distance and Stuart Broad will need to stay with him for at least an hour in the morning: it looks unlikely right now. At very worst, England need to reach 300 to feel that they are still in the game.

Right now, you have to feel that this game is Pakistan’s match to lose. By the end of the 3^rd Day we may well be seeing the end-game approach.

England v Pakistan, 1st Test, Day 1: Misbah Shows the Way

 

England v Pakistan

1^st Test

Day 1: Misbah Shows the Way

 July 15^th  2016

At times, Misbah has been a figure of fun in world cricket. “Start the tuk-tuk” is a typical comment when he is playing one of his slow, deliberate innings (ignoring that, when the situation permits and demands, he can be incredibly destructive too).

A year or so ago most people expected confidently his retirement, after all, he is past 42 now, yet he is batting as well, or better, than ever. In 2014, well past his 40^th birthday, he came up with consecutive scores of 101, 101* and 102* v Australia. Now, in the four Tests v England that are the last four that Pakistan have played, he has managed 3, 51, 102, 87, 71, 38 & 110*. Forget the fact that it was not until his seventh Test and his twelfth innings, more than six years after debut, that he finally reached 30 in an innings, an average of over 50 in Tests is impressive testament to the unflappable skill that he brings to a team not known for its calmness.

Quite apart from his runs, Misbah has united the Pakistan team with his captaincy. It is hard to believe that he would have allowed a Test to be forfeit by losing control of a situation. Since taking over the captaincy  in 2010, in the wake of the last Pakistan tour of England, he has scored eight of his ten Test centuries and averaged 58.5, winning 20 and losing just 11 of his 42 Tests as captain.

His importance to his side is evident from his figures:

·        In matches that he has won as captain his average rises to an impressive 71.6.

·        In matches that he has drawn as captain, he averages 70.8.

·        In matches that he has lost as captain, he averages just 30.2.

Misbah’s record as captain is very impressive indeed. Some people seem to think that England will have an easy series win, but just look at his numbers as captain:

·        42 Tests, Won 20, Drawn 11, Lost 11.

Those figures do not give much evidence that he allows a lot of 2-0 and 3-0 series defeats. It is Misbah’s misfortune to lead Pakistan in an era when the have suffered Test exile and political ostracism. Of the sixteen Tests played by Pakistan in the last two years, nine have been against England and Sri Lanka. While England have played a series against every Full Member bar Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in the last two years, Pakistan have to settle for series against anyone willing to play them.

When you have to make do with crumbs from the top table and have a lack of marquee series, you enjoy any success that comes your way. The sight of a 42 year old player celebrating his debut century at Lord’s with ten push-ups is likely to become one of the images of the summer. That he did it after rescuing his side from 77-3 on a pitch seemingly full of runs, has added merit.

Two wickets just before the Close to the inspirational Woakes have levelled the contest again when it looked as if Misbah’s efforts could lead it to run away from England. After his debut at The Oval in 2013 – a debut that was nowhere near the disaster that legend tries to recall – the continued selection of Chris Woakes has been met with derision and despair by fans. His average is still a fraction over 35, but his last 3 Tests have brought 12 wickets so far at 16.3, apart from some useful runs. On the day, although he slowed as he tired, Woakes was the fastest of the England bowlers, sending down several balls at over 90mph in his first spell.

Apart from Woakes, the debut of Jake Ball was not to be despised: a review second delivery of his career that pitched just far enough outside leg to save Masood, followed by a wicket in the first over of his second spell. Ball bowled quicker than many expected, although his fastest deliveries were just below 90mph.

In contrast, Finn and Moeen are struggling. Steve Finn was expensive and not threatening at all, again well down on pace. Loyalty is one thing, but Finn has lost his action – again – and needs some time back in County cricket to recover form and confidence. Finn’s problems would be easier to carry were Moeen not having a rough time. After an amazing start in Test cricket, Moeen is now becoming better known and batsmen are managing to avoid being fooled by him. He still has his days – the 7-116 in Durban shows that he can be very effective still – but his last 7 Tests have brought just 5 wickets at 119 each: the selectors have to start to ask themselves whether or not Adil Rashid, who is in decent form this season (20 wickets @ 35.3, with 3x50 with the bat) would do better.

A lot can happen still in this match, but the betting must be that Stokes and Anderson will replace Finn and Ball in the 2^nd Test and that Moeen may not see out the series. With an increasing pool of players who are in the frame to play and do a good job in the different formats, players in poor form can be dropped from a position of strength.

On Day 2, Pakistan will want to push on to 400+ and ensure against the possibility that they could be caught chasing a substantial England lead on a deteriorating pitch on Days 4 and 5. England will have hopes of wrapping up the innings for 330-340 and applying some pressure. You get the impression though that both sides will be fairly happy to come out with a draw and to move on to Old Trafford still level.