‘ENGLAND’S FINEST HOUR IN TESTS ON FOREIGN SOIL’

MIKE WALTERS

BY

THEY were dancing in the dark in Karachi when Graham Thorpe smuggled the winning runs through the gloom 24 years ago.

At the peak of their powers, West Indies were shocked by Graham Gooch’s underdogs in 1990 at Sabina Park in Jamaica, where Mike Gatting had to extract pieces of the ball from his nose after Malcolm Marshall’s bouncer four years earlier.

On a dramatic final day in

Johannesburg in 2005, Matthew Hoggard’s seven-wicket haul delivered a series-clinching win against the odds.

Ray Illingworth was chaired off by his players after sealing an Ashes triumph in Sydney following heroic attrition in which tilted umpiring had denied his side a single favourable

LBW decision in the entire series.

In Mumbai 18 years ago, Freddie Flintoff convened a noisy lunchtime hoedown to Johnny Cash’s Ring of

Fire, and India – spooked by the racket in the dressing room next door – collapsed to defeat.

And Kevin Pietersen decorated his return from Textgate with an audacious 186 on the same ground in 2012, one of the greatest innings unfurled on Indian soil by a visiting batsman.

But this was England’s finest hour in Test cricket on foreign soil because the odds were not just stacked against them – even the bookies had packed up and gone fishing. Tom Hartley became the first player to take seven wickets on his debut since Jim Laker.

Despite the assorted marvels of Bazball, seldom, if ever, have England gone into a Test series abroad with the nation’s expectations lower.

And then to concede a 190-run lead on first innings, on a pitch offering more spin than a Whitehall briefing, and come out 28 runs the right side of the line is incredible.

One of the most satisfying days of cricket in living memory.