It is a more interesting game when the big trumps are played early. Currently England have their best batsmen at No1 and No3 and here they showed the rest how to do it.
It was a good day for a masterclass. Sunshine in Manchester; for once Misbah‑ul‑Haq failed to win the toss; the pitch was biscuit brown yet flat as a pancake and Alastair Cook and Joe Root did their best to book in for afternoon tea as well as bed and breakfast in a decisive 185-run partnership.
The ball swung a little at the start for the pacemen but it was the expert dissection of Yasir Shah, whose 10‑wicket haul at Lord’s decided the first Test, that will have given the greatest satisfaction to the England dressing room.
There was not much help for Yasir but then that was the case at Lord’s in the first innings. Even so Misbah tossed the ball to Yasir at midday and there was little respite for the eager wrist-spinner after that. Unlike at Lord’s he could make no headway. Here was the advantage of packing the top order with the class batsmen.
Cook is a better player of spin than he may look. There is never much swash and buckle when he faces international spinners but from his debut Test in Nagpur in 2006 to the series in India in 2012 when his centuries were as important though less memorable than Kevin Pietersen’s to this innings against the troublesome Yasir, Cook has played with great assurance, a consequence of the clearest of minds. He knows precisely how he is going to score his runs before he takes guard.
So we have learnt to expect nothing flash, even though Cook has been scoring much faster this season than normal (this summer his strike rate has been 54 compared 46 throughout his career). Against Yasir the danger ball at Lord’s was the top-spinner that scuttles through quicker than anticipated. Hence the necessity to play straight to straight deliveries. This, of course, is second nature to Cook.
On Friday his defence was secure and confident; there was no need to impose himself upon the wrist-spinner with extravagant stroke-play. There are certain players who can subdue a bowler with the massive certainty of their forward defensive – Geoffrey Boycott inevitably springs to mind, so do Sunil Gavaskar and Gary Kirsten.
There was the occasional cut from Cook but only when given any width by Yasir; he clipped the ball neatly off his toes and the runs came at more than a trickle. So Yasir tried to tempt him. He left a huge gap at extra cover, inviting Cook to open the face and drive the ball in that direction against the spin. Cook would have none of that. If ever Yasir over-pitched, Cook opted to drive the ball past the diving left-hand of mid-off. There was no flimsy opening of the face by England’s captain.
Cook has been in good form all summer without making full capital. This time he was rewarded by three figures, the landmark which attracts absurd attention. The same applied to Root who made absolutely sure that he would cash in this time.
Like Cook, Root is a masterful player of spin and a more obvious one. He judges the length of the ball precisely and quickly, so he declines to lunge forward at it. Instead he waits and punches off the back foot thereby demanding the bowler to pitch fuller. Then he pounces with a measured drive. Players of Root’s quality can hit the same half-volley through extra-cover or midwicket, depending where the gap lies. Root achieved this effortlessly.
At Lord’s in the first innings he had seemed equally at ease, whereupon a slog-sweep against Yasir sliced up in to the air. Here he bided his time. He was on 66 and had not hit a boundary for 46 balls; Yasir was bowling to him with six men on the off-side and a gaping hole at midwicket. Finally Root went down on one knee and fetched a blameless delivery to that midwicket boundary as he had tried to do at Lord’s. He did not bother to play that shot again; a fielder was moved to the leg-side and Root proceeded on his merry way.
By 5pm Yasir had yielded 100 runs without taking a wicket in 25 overs and Misbah had nowhere to turn – apart from a couple of gentle overs from Azhar Ali. Yasir had not bowled that badly or that differently to his display at Lord’s on a slightly more helpful surface. The difference was that England had their two best practitioners at the crease simultaneously, which was bound to make life easier for the rest.
