England challenge every convention in rewriting rulebook
Third innings used to be cue for batsmen to pad out their average but Stokes has little time for playing it safe
Meandering through the third innings was the conventional way to go in Test cricket. England binned that by scoring at more than a run a ball, to give themselves time to declare and take two wickets before the close of day four.
If England happen to lose this Test, for once not a word of criticism would be fair, whether of the declaration or the rest of their play. They flew in with some preparation in the United Arab Emirates but without a warm-up match; they were hit by a virus and were far from fully fit; and yet they became the first team to score 500 on the first day of a Test match, let alone a series. Their Test cricket has become a beacon unto the nations.
The norm has been for an England captain to let an innings run on for a few more overs before declaring, to be safe – and for his team to lose momentum. Not Ben Stokes. As soon as Harry Brook was out, he kept his foot on the accelerator and made Pakistan bat again. His declaration gave England the maximum amount of time to win.
We are so lucky to be watching England’s Test cricket as it is now. Under Stokes and Brendon Mccullum, England are combining the best of both worlds: giving us the best of orthodoxy, summed up in Brook’s cover-driving, and the best of unorthodoxy, summed up in all the novelties they have brought into the five-day game from not only T20 but also their own imaginations and experiments.
Joe Root batted left-handed. Stokes put a fielder on the boundary straight behind the bowler. Using the new ball to bowl bouncers is not new, but giving it to two spinners is. He has coaxed six wickets out of a rookie spinner who did not know he was going to play an hour before the start. Every convention has been challenged, but with expert judgment, so worthwhile ones have been reinforced and worthless ones binned.
England are playing their 1,056th Test and never have they performed with such verve: for certain they have never scored at such a rate as they have in Rawalpindi. The third innings used to be cue for bolstering your Test average by finishing with a not out: remember the 1995 Sydney
Test when Graeme Hick, slowing down nearing his hundred, was on 98 when Mike Atherton declared?
In a similar situation Brook, on 87 off 64 balls, swung hard, missed and was bowled. He had a 120-year-old England Test record within range of three or four hits: the 76-ball century by Gilbert Jessop. All he had to do was push singles but no, that would have cost time and detracted from the chance of winning.
Irrespective of the pitch, to score 264 runs from 35.5 overs is a superlative achievement. Pakistan could spread all their fielders around the boundary. Their leg-spinner could bowl round the wicket and into the rough outside the right-handers’ leg stump, and did. Yet England had answers: not one but many.
Before T20, the only way to score off a leg-spinner pitching into the rough from round the wicket was to sweep conventionally, as Root did, for once, when getting caught at short fine leg. Faced with this piece of problem-solving, Brook reeled off the possibilities against Zahid Mahmood.
He reverse-hit Mahmood twice in the three balls when he tried this most negative of tactics in the first innings – and naturally the majority of the fielders were on the leg side. In the second innings Brook chose to sweep, or to run down the pitch and then sweep, or to run down the pitch and hit straight. One was a drive for the ages, when he ran forwards, and towards the leg side, and deposited a leg-break back over the bowler’s head.
What Stokes’s players are doing is unprecendented. A few individuals have batted as audaciously at times, but no Test team collectively.
We should also appreciate the other novelties in this Test. The relations between England and Pakistan used to be the most acrimonious between any two Test nations: they are now sweetness and light, partly because the sides have played with and against so many of their opponents: thus Brook and Haris Rauf have represented Yorkshire and Pakistan Super League franchises together. And partly because Stokes, reformed character that he is, is a chivalrous as well as utterly competitive leader.
The crowds too used to be silent in Pakistan when an England batsman played a decent shot or hit a boundary. No more. Another convention has been binned, and Test cricket is all the brighter for it.
We should all applaud the historic phenomenon which has been unfolding since May, when Stokes was appointed captain.