Late yesterday afternoon Harry Brook took a catch off Josh Tongue to dismiss Mohammad Ali for 8 and end proceedings with Pakistan on 194, which coincidentally gave England victory by 194 runs and an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three match series. This post looks back at the salient events of the last couple of days.
PICKING UP THE STORY
When I published my previous post England were 162-6 in their second innings, an overall lead of 342. Daniel Lawrence was on 37 at the point, and there was a little more play on the Saturday, in the course of which he completed a fine 50. England overnighted on 177-7, a lead of 357, with Lawrence 50 not out. Lawrence is starting to show that he is worth his place as a middle order batter, which he has to do – his status as the team’s spin option is purely nominal, and any wickets he takes in that capacity will be a bonus.
THE SUNDAY
England extended their innings to 208, a lead of 388 overall. Pakistan in their three previous innings in the series had tallied 417 runs in total. Imam-ul-Haq was out the match with a calf strain, so England had only nine wickets to take. Ollie Robinson pinned Azan Awais LBW for 6 and three balls later bowled Abdullah Shafique for a duck. Babar Azam got a vicious delivery from Archer, which lifted nastily on him, but a player of his experience should have been able to do better than fend it into the hands of Jordan Cox at third slip. That was 14-3 and a very familiar situation for Pakistan in this series. Shan Masood and Saud Shakeel showed some spirit, Shakeel especially batting impressively, while Masood resisted stoutly. When Masood and Mohammad Rizwan were both out in quick succession, Masood for 26 and Rizwan for 1, both LBW to Robinson, it was 115-5, effectively 6, and the question was whether a decidedly fragile tail could summon up sufficient resistance between them to enable Shakeel to reach three figures. Ali Usman’s official position of number eight looks too high for him, never mind the actual position of number seven that Imam-ul-Haq’s indisposition left him occupying. On this occasion he managed a score of 9, and helped the sixth wicket to put on 35. Mohammad Abbas, who had earlier bowled his way on the Lord’s honours board, now batted better than he usually manages. Abbas had seen Shakeel to the brink of the magic three figures, and it was the specialist batter who fell in the end, taking on a short ball from Tongue and aiming at a long boundary. He connected cleanly, but the required carry was too long for him and the ball sailed straight into the waiting hands of Harry Brook, ending his innings for a splendid 97. Saud Shakeel has a fine test record, but not many of his runs have been scored outside Asia, so this big score was especially important for him. There can be few test playing countries whose conditions would be more alien to a Pakistani who as yet has not been a county overseas player than England, and the shot that ended the innings was about the only black mark against him – and had it gone either side of Brook instead of directly to him he would have been on the honours board. Mohammad Ali and Mohammad Abbas added 18 together in a final act of resistance before the catch referred to in the introduction ended things. Oliver Edward Robinson with figures of 13-6-11-4 in the first innings and 14-5-24-4 in the second was named Player of the Match. Officially the match ended in the evening session of day four, but without some fairly major intervention by the weather it would have been over round about lunch on day three – there were 206 overs of actually playing time. Pakistan are usually noted for being inconsistent but in this series there has been no such inconsistency – they have consistently not been good enough. Scorecard here.
PHOTOGRAPHS
My usual sign off…
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