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Rashid in the frame as England seek bounce-back
- Updated: July 21, 2016
Match facts
July 22-26, 2016 Start time 11am local (1000 GMT)
Big Picture
Four days of closure for Pakistan at Lord’s, four days of soul-searching for England in the interim. A glorious advertisement for Test cricket finished in scenes of rare delirium on Sunday evening, with Mohammad Amir sealing his personal redemption with the final wicket of the match, that of Jake Ball, before the entire Pakistan squad performed a set of five press-ups and a salute to the national flag, as a tribute to the army instructors who helped prepare them for this most exacting of tours.
Under the leadership of Misbah-ul-Haq, Pakistan have found a commonality of purpose that few captains have cultivated since the days of Imran Khan, and his first-day hundred was one of the most profound statements of intent ever witnessed at the grand old ground. If the challenge is now to maintain that level of intensity throughout the remaining three Tests, then all those exhaustive weeks of fitness work, skills training, and acclimatisation would appear to suggest that they fully intend keeping the pressure ramped up on their disorientated opponents.
Setbacks for England’s developing team are nothing new – they have lost eight out of 19 Tests since May 2015, after all – but the manner in which they were put in their place last week was particularly comprehensive. In Yasir Shah, an attacking legspinner of the highest calibre, their batsmen encountered a foe rarely seen since Shane Warne’s heyday in the 1990s and early 2000s, and were duly routed.
Alastair Cook summed up the performance as “naïve”, which was both undeniable but also alarming for England’s hopes of an immediate fightback. Naïvety, after all, can only be overcome through situational experience, and the ease with which Yasir was able to run through a rather startled middle-order did not augur at all well.
Some of the shots against the legspinner evoked memories of Ashes drubbings past – Jonny Bairstow’s cramped cut against a quicker ball in the first innings, Moeen Ali’s ragged charge and miss in the second – and all that was before the magnificence of Pakistan’s three left-arm seamers was taken into account. Amir, Wahab Riaz and Rahat Ali arguably took until the second innings to find their range at Lord’s, but by the final day they were howling through England’s defences with the demented brilliance that has long been a Pakistan trademark.
If changes to England’s team are inevitable then they haven’t exactly been predictable either. A 14-man squad (latterly chopped down to 12) has seen to that. Recriminations had been in the air ever since the omissions of James Anderson and Ben Stokes from the Lord’s squad, and there’s even talk that the selectors will be given the chop at the end of the summer for their failure to reflect the ambitions and direction of the coach, Trevor Bayliss. But Anderson’s absence didn’t exactly account for the failings of the batsmen, and nor, frankly, did Stokes’. While playing for Durham against Lancashire last week, he was extracted by the first ball he faced from the legspinner, Matt Parkinson.
Still, if legspin is the talk of the series, then the inclusion of Adil Rashid as a potential replacement, or even …
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