There are days, and this was one of them, when any cricket supporter who values the game for what it is and what it can bring, can cast aside affiliation and nationalism and simply will a player on.
Misbah-ul-Haq has been captain of Pakistan, a job with a precarious lifespan, for longer than any other. He is the rock on which this Pakistan team is founded, the glue that has held together a team who for too long had been in disarray and discord. And shortly before six o’clock, he calmly angled the ball away for a single backward of point and strolled insouciantly through to his 10th Test hundred. Aside from the England bowlers, there cannot have been a dry eye in the house.
Lord’s has seen some spectacular celebrations of batting milestones but none such as this. There must have been a dare involved. Misbah whirled his bat gently, then removed helmet and gloves and saluted the Pakistan balcony on to which were packed so many players and management that health and safety must have been worried. Then, he got down first on his knees and then prone, not in religious devotion, as some do, but in order to execute half a dozen press-ups. I may be an old man, he was saying, but I can knock spots off you lot. So he can.
Misbah is an old man in a modern game. He is 42 years and 47 days old, and no one as old as he has played a Test since John Emburey bowled his off spin against West Indies in 1995. We go back to 1984 and the Sri Lanka legspinner DS de Silva to find an older Test cricketer at Lord’s and before that Brian Close four decades ago. To find an older centurion on this ground, we must go back a full 90 years, to the Ashes Test of 1926 when first Warren Bardsley made 193 for Australia, and then Jack Hobbs 119 for England, both at the age of 43. No Test captain has made a hundred at such an age. By any standard it is a remarkable achievement.
Misbah survived fatigue and an early dart with the second new ball to finish the day with 110 of Pakistan’s 282 for six. He and Asad Shafiq, prolific against England last winter, had put the team in an enviable position with a fine fifth-wicket stand of 148. But with the close in sight, Chris Woakes, the pick of the bowlers once again, found Asad’s edge and he was gone for 73, with Woakes going on to bowl Rahat Ali with the last ball of the day to finish with four for 45.
Thus, in the last 10 minutes, things probably evened themselves out, although Pakistan will have noted that the second ball swung significantly and that they possess bowlers to utilise it where England, in the controversial absence of Jimmy Anderson, do not.
Lord’s Test matches are becoming five days of inevitable drudgery for bowlers. Mick Hunt’s job of preparing this pitch will not have been helped by the unpredictability of this soggy summer but the first ball of the series, from Stuart Broad, told its story, barely carrying ankle high to Jonny Bairstow. The great Glenn McGrath, who pretty much owned this ground whenever he played here, always craved bounce over movement and no bowler would disagree. Good carry helps bowlers and it helps batsmen: the game is the winner.
England flogged away all day but generally the ball simply slunk sullenly on to the bat. A couple of edges went to hand, and were not taken, but they were grass-trimmers. By late afternoon, with the old ball, Broad was reduced to bowling his leg cutters with men placed short either side of the cut strip. Swing was the only weapon and there was precious little of that to be seen beyond a little shape from Broad, and for a brief while, after the lacquer had gone from the new ball to be replaced by a decent polish, some for Woakes, who is establishing himself as a linchpin of the attack and collected the first two wickets of the day. Look casually and Jake Ball could be mistaken for a slightly thicker-set Broad, such are his mannerisms.
He made a fine impression on his debut, bowling the fastest deliveries of the day, although his maiden Test wicket, an lbw decision unsuccessfully reviewed by the batsman Azhar Ali, would not have survived the proposed new tighter protocols for DRS usage.
They were not the best of conditions for Steven Finn, who has been somewhere near his best for Middlesex but as a hit-the-deck bowler found this pitch a proof of the law of diminishing returns. He hammered away willingly: give him some decent pace in a pitch and he will be a handful. For now, the skidders, the turf-kissers, Pakistan’s reversers and particularly the returning Mohammad Amir, might be the ones most likely to prosper.
England had done well enough to remove three batsmen for 77 either side of lunch, thanks to Woakes and Ball. Shan Masood does not look like a good Test opener but nonetheless it was a good ball from Woakes that took his edge. Mohammad Hafeez, missed at third slip by James Vince when 11, was caught off a steepling leading edge when trying to work to leg, undone by the slowness of the pitch. Azhar Ali was then lbw to Ball, a yorker-length delivery and after a fourth-wicket stand of 57, Younis Khan was caught for 33, clipping Broad to midwicket.
