England are learning not just to win but to win in adversity, another box ticked. Last year, against New Zealand at Lord’s,they overcame a first-innings deficit and were victorious and now, at Edgbaston on Sunday, they have done it again. They might have folded on the third evening, when Alastair Cook and Alex Hales went out with England 103 runs behind, but so positively did they bat, fed by some modest bowling at a time when Pakistan ought to have been hammering home their advantage, that they shifted the game in a session. By the time the teams took the field on the fourth morning the momentum was with England and Pakistan, knowing they must bat last, would already have seen the signs.
To win such matches, in the sort of conditions pertaining at Edgbaston, requires calmness and a thorough understanding, not necessarily obvious, of what it would take. England were unlikely to win with spin nor was it going to be done by bombardment for there was no great pace in the surface and the ball from short of a length allowed batsmen time to play or duck. Only Mohammad Hafeez, in the second innings, was to succumb to anything that was short and that was self-destruction. If there was orthodox swing, then it was minimal, dissipated rapidly and even for the master, Jimmy Anderson, was early and obvious.
Instead England inflicted the sort of defeat that Pakistan themselves once did, particularly when the genius of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Imran Khan was in its pomp. It involves patience and no sense of panic, with a certainty that when the time is right there could be a game-changer. It is all about preparing the ball, an art in itself. Five days of dry weather and cricket had rendered the pitch abrasive, with some used pitches adding to the potential. Pace bowlers deliver the ball cross seam, so that it lands on the leather rather than the stitching. Bowling a spinner adds to the process. Gradually, but with certainty, there comes a time.
The second Anderson runs up to bowl with the ball in his left hand, hiding the shine from the batsman, the England team know they are in business. It means the ball is going to reverse swing and he does not wish to telegraph his intentions. With orthodox swing his changes for inswing or outswing are so minuscule as to be very hard to detect. Here the very obvious differential between the carefully preserved shiny side – not a lacquered shine of the new ball but a finish that paint manufacturers describe as satin – and the grubby, scoured rough side, is a give-away.
The great West Indian fast bowler Andy Roberts once demonstrated how he could manipulate the ball through 180 degrees even as his bowling arm was coming over and so did not mind what the batsman saw, but he was an extraordinary prestidigitator. Anderson is content to maintain the mystery.
Anderson delivered a six-over spell that was breathtaking for its mastery. There was no great movement but there was some – enough, half the width of the bat – and once that is there the game has no finer exponent. He managed a single wicket thus but it was the important one of Younis Khan and its mode, drawing the batsman forward, shading it away and finding the edge, was precisely what was needed to send a message to the opposition. That spell, largely unappreciated maybe from the simple figures alone, set the standard. Six wickets fell in the session and, with the nature of the Pakistan tail resembling an alligator rather than one of Cook’s docked sheep, the match was all but won.
The series still remains alive. The Pakistan team is resourceful, superbly man-managed by Misbah-ul-Haq, and possesses genuine match winners. But even more than England they are on a learning curve as a group. Yasir Shah, the match-winner at Lord’s, has struggled to exert an influence since, once England realised that his whole modus operandi was as a modern DRS bowler, wicket to wicket, targeting the pads rather than the outside edge of the right-hander. For all his success he is a relative novice who has yet to learn the variations of conditions beyond those in UAE. Without Mohammad Hafeez’s off-spin, still under official scrutiny, Pakistan were definitely a bowler light and the workload on the three seamers, especially the admirable Sohail Khan, who was blowing hard when Cook and Hales were making merry, was too heavy. The difficulty will come in trying to rectify that for the final Test at The Oval on Thursday for the batting has little enough depth as it is.
England have no such worries. All three of the batsmen who might have been considered as playing for places – Hales, James Vince and Gary Ballance – had sufficiently good games to suggest England are on track with them and the bowling was largely good. Unless the Oval pitch is radically different from Edgbaston’s (and there is little to suggest it will be), then there would seem to be no reason to change the team that has just won. If England win again it will be down to their pace bowlers with help from Moeen Ali.
Trevor Bayliss has made some vague noises about Adil Rashid but he is probably just covering all bases. Anderson was outstanding, Stuart Broad canny enough to pick up wickets even when not at the absolute top of his game, Chris Woakes consistently reliable now and Steven Finn finally started to get the fortune that his bowling deserves. That will get the job done.
