England urged to finish the job at Old Trafford
Alastair Cook’ s unexpected decision to decline the follow-on option at Old Trafford, despite a lead of 391 runs, has put the onus on England to prove him right in the second Investec Test.
Cook had the opportunity to put Pakistan back in again once England bowled the tourists out for just 198 yesterday.
But their captain was dissuaded during a ninthwicket stand of 60 between Misbah-ul-Haq(52)andWahab Riaz from taking the quick route to a probable innings victory.
Instead, after England extended their advantage by a further 98 for one at stumps on a rain-shortened third day, they will win at best by mere runs.
Their hope will be that the margin will still be very substantial as they seek to level the four-match series at 1-1.
England’s assistant coach Paul Farbrace ex- plained the thinking, and insisted the decision was reached without extensive discussions.
“The key to it was wanting to bat while the wicket is still good ,” said Far brace.
“We din’t want to put ourselves under any pressure of having to chase a score in the fourth innings.”
Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur admitted to pleasant surprise at being spared the follow-on, and in his estimation it is a turn of events which gives his team a marginally better chance of achieving a still highly-improbable stalemate after they faltered first time round to Chris Woakes (4-67) and others.
Farbrace nonetheless added: “There wasn’t a lot of discussion – it was a simple conversation.
“Alastair and (coach) Trevor (Bayliss) are the two that would have a decent conversation.
“The longer it went, the feeling was ‘let’s get back in while the wicket is still good’.
“When you make those decisions, you get on and back it up. It’s up to us to prove we got it right.”
England, likely to bat on for just half-a-session or so on today, did not use pace pair James Anderson and Stuart Broad after lunch – with only two more wickets needed.
Farbrace said: “We still think the pitch will deteriorate, and the bounce will be variable.
“We were hoping to bowl them out a lot quicker and then they’d be fresh to take the new ball when we enforced.
“The longer it went, the decision was taken to bat again.
“We all have opinions, and they vary.