BROAD SWORD STRIKES BLOW
He wins Vaughan spat with star role in crushing victory
It was entirely apt that stuart Broad should take the final wicket of a second test which was as thoroughly one-sided as the one England lost so horribly at Lord’s.
Broad’s spat with friend and former captain Michael Vaughan was the curious sub-plot of a match England badly needed to win after a miserable run of six defeats in eight tests.
It started with Vaughan saying England might ‘ruffle a few feathers’ by dropping one of their big two bowling beasts and ended, several exchanges later, with Broad having the final word on the pitch.
we can assume nobody will be calling for Broad’s head any time soon after he confirmed a return to his best, with six wickets in a win by an innings and 55 runs after an ashes he described as ‘rubbish’.
Broad was the pick of the attack throughout this test, just as he was two matches ago in Christchurch and at times at Lord’s, and deserves every credit for remodelling his action at an advanced stage of his illustrious career.
He is now on the brink of the top 10 test wicket-takers list with plenty still to come.
Broad’s display was only one outstanding aspect of an all-round performance that was the opposite of the one at Lord’s, where England were out-batted, out-bowled and out-fielded by Pakistan.
How maddening it must be for captain Joe Root and coach trevor Bayliss that their team seem to have to plumb the depths before they show what they are really capable of.
at least this emphatic win, sealed in seven sessions, will give England breathing space as they return to the white-ball cricket where they have no such problems and the small matter of a one-day series against australia.
Root and Bayliss will know they cannot afford to start so badly when they face India in their next test, still 59 days away, if this is not to be another false dawn in their attempt to climb up the test rankings. Make no mistake, it would have been mightily hard for Bayliss to carry on as test coach if his side had lost here, so the stakes were high at a venue where England had lost five of their last eight tests. there was never any danger of that miserable run being extended at a Headingley ground that, frankly, should not have been staging this test while it resembled a building site. Better to wait until the new stand is complete. Yet there is always drama at Headingley and even if much of it was provided off the pitch via the Broad v Vaughan heavyweight scrap, there was plenty for England to be pleased with on it. and nothing will please them more than the successful return of Jos Buttler to tests after 18 months when, bafflingly, England’s test side ditched their most gifted cricketer. Buttler made the difference here, showing he can adapt to batting in difficult test conditions on saturday and then taking the game away from Pakistan yesterday by brilliantly extending England’s lead.
Buttler went to his second successive half-century with a six off Mohammad abbas and then, as he began to run out of partners, he took the attack to Pakistan as only he can, hitting 15 off a Faheem ashraf over and crashing 35 off his last 11 balls to finish unbeaten on 80.
and it came, it must be said, after he was dropped on four on saturday in the costliest of misses by Pakistan.
Bayliss has consistently advocated picking Buttler for the test side but for some reason a former panel that came up with some questionable selections overruled him.
so this was a feather in the cap of new national selector Ed smith, who insisted on bringing Buttler back for Lord’s even though he had not played a red-ball game since september.
smith and the selectors were right, too, to throw 20-year-old Dom Bess into this series when his somerset team-mate Jack Leach was ruled out with a broken thumb, rather than go back to Moeen ali.
If England are going to have any hope of winning in sri Lanka this winter, they will need quality spin, and while Bess has some way to go to prove himself ready for that challenge, he clearly has the temperament for the job.
Here Bess claimed his first three test wickets after going some way to setting up England’s victory with 49 as nightwatchman on saturday. there was an outstanding catch, too, for Bess in a much-improved England fielding display.
It could not be said England got it totally right in throwing sam Curran in for his debut when Ben stokes was injured, not least because he does not have the pace or height to be a test seamer, but Curran has something about him.
He reached 20 on his 20th birthday before claiming one wicket to add to his solitary scalp in the first innings. a far from disappointing debut.
so, England go into test hibernation on a high note and now it is back to the all-action white-ball team with one year to go before the world Cup.
any talk of a crisis can be put on hold.