Jonny Bairstow is quite right, even if his thinking might be seen as veering towards the negative: should England lose the second Test it would not be a cause for panic. England do not suddenly possess a bad team but were beaten in a superb Test at Lord’s by a side who ultimately played better and deserved their success. There is no shame in that.
Test matches though come tumbling one upon another so the day cannot be long off when another match starts while the previous one is still in progress. Is it a figment of the imagination that recalls a player taking the field at Lord’s in a Test and The Oval in a county match on the same day? So, scarcely has a victory been celebrated by one team than the opportunity for redemption, revenge, a “chance to silence the critics”– call it what you will – comes readily to the vanquished.
England will be strengthened by the return of Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes, both of whom ought to have been playing in the first Test. Water under the bridge now. Anderson will replace Jake Ball and Stokes … well, we shall see.
Fingers would have been pointed at Steven Finn as the obvious one to make way, given Chris Woakes has made himself indispensable. Now that Finn and Jake Ball have been jettisoned it would seem to leave a straight choice between the usual balance of three seamers, plus Stokes’s all-round skills, and a single spinner; or the dropping of a batsman.
History tells us very little about what to expect. The teams have met in Manchester on five occasions, going back to 1954, so there is not much there. In 2001, Pakistan overran England in the final session just as Australia arrived here having heard about the new fighting unit that was the host team. In the time it took them to get from their hotel to an official reception England lost half their wickets to Waz ‘n’ Waqar and Saqlain Mushtaq, who coincidentally has been advising the England spinners these past few days.
Five years later, on a Peter Marron special, the boot was on the other foot, with Steve Harmison and Monty Panesar sharing 19 of 20 Pakistan wickets (the other was a run out), England winning by an innings. Since then, the pitch has been rotated through 90 degrees, new stands built, the prevailing wind comes from a different angle and the wicket is said to have lost its teeth.
It is the opinion here that England will not beat Pakistan with spin. Any comparison between Yasir Shah, who is deemed the world’s leading Test-match bowler, and England’s spinners is a fatuous one. When the teams met in the UAE last winter Yasir and Shoaib Malik took 26 wickets at 21.5 and 20.7 respectively. For England Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid managed 17 between them at, respectively, 48.6 and 69.5. The attack was held together by the brilliance of Anderson and Stuart Broad, together with Mark Wood and Stokes.
Rashid’s five wickets in the second innings of the first Test in Abu Dhabi, the first such haul for an England wrist spinner since Tommy Greenhough more than half a century earlier, is viewed by some as reason to include him now. Pakistan batsmen figured him out pretty quickly thereafter.
England failed at Lord’s largely because the top-order batting could not cope against three excellent left-arm pacemen and Yasir’s wrist spin, with reliance too heavily placed on Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Bairstow. It should be no more incumbent on the lower order to keep bailing the batsmen out than it would be to expect Root and Vince to take a hatful of wickets. England could, if they were minded, decide Vince offers style but no sense of permanence, and as a starting point recognise Stokes as a superior Test batsman, capable of batting at five.
Gary Ballance, who at least has a gameplan, could move up to four, and Bairstow at six (he is capable of five although keeping as well would prove physically and mentally draining). England could then have played all of their four seamers, including Finn, who for all the brickbats thrown at him bowled a brilliant final spell at Lord’s. Playing him when not at his best and discarding him now when he is seems an absurd thing to do: historically he takes wickets at a faster rate than anyone in the team.
What is likely to happen is that the strategy will stay the same, with only the tweak to the personnel. It means Moeen retains his place, as he should. From Lord’s he will be remembered for the manner of his second-innings departure but he was the victim of a dreadful lbw decision in the first innings and could do little about the manner in which Misbah-ul-Haq sliced and diced him when he bowled: it was brilliant batting rather than poor bowling. The alternative is Rashid, who is a terrific white-ball cricketer, aided by the imperative, particularly in T20, to try to get after him, with fielders out. There is time in Tests to wait for the bad ball and put it away, a low-risk but productive strategy against someone who is slightly slower than optimum. Incidentally the reckless second-ball yahoo that saw him dismissed in the first innings of the second Test in Dubai cancels out that of Moeen: one-all on the slog front.
It would help the England cause if Misbah could call incorrectly. There have been six Tests between the sides since England last won the toss, seven since England last won a match and 11 since they last won both toss and match. No one can say they are not due.
