Woakes, Buttler chase down 277 as England win a thriller against Pakistan

Woakes and Buttler engaged in a match-winning partnership that marshalled England to a 3 wicket victory over Pakistan at the Emirates Old Trafford and go 1-0 up in the series

Trivia : England completed the second highest run chase at Manchester and for the first time since 2008 a target was successfully chased down at this venue.

A very special victory for the hosts and this one will be remembered for long because throughout the test match England were playing catch-up to Pakistan and one good session in their favour won them the match. This turnaround occured yesterday on day 4, when England were five down for 118 and chasing 277 looked out of sight with young guns Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah firing rockets at the batsmen. Ollie Pope had just got out to a snorter from Shaheen which hit the head of his bat’s grip and ballooned up straight to gully, completely rattling him and leaving England at the jaws of defeat.

Trivia : England have now won 6 consecutive tests in 6 matches under Joe Root.

Woakes had just come out to bat and you’d expect him to stay around for some time to support Buttler’s innings . He flashed at one delivery which went for four down to third-man which made his intentions very clear. He looked to maintain a positive mindset and drove predominantly to the faster bowlers while Buttler used the sweep to good effect against the spinners. The situation was tailor-made for someone like Buttler who’s natural game is to play his shots and take on the opposition. He read the situation quickly and took advantage of it before he was out when England needed just 21 runs to win but Woakes took England through without letting any pressure get the better of him. Buttler had dropped centurion Shan Masood once and missed his stumping on another occasion.He definitely owed his team some runs.

Earlier in the first innings when Pakistan decided to have a bat after winning the toss, opener Shan Masood played an outstanding knock of 156. He was a part of the series against England in 2016 and a very noticeable change he made to his batting was that he left a lot of the deliveries bowled at him outside the off-stump and punished anything that was short of length.

Trivia: Shan Masood had left 3% deliveries bowled at him in the corridor in the 2016 series vs England compared to leaving 20% of the balls bowled at him in the first innings of this test match itself, in this series.

He was well-supported for a while by Babar Azam and then Shadab Khan down the order. England missed an opportunity when the highly rated Babar Azam was looking edgy early on in his innings. A few freebies on the pads by Anderson post lunch set him up for another ton but he fell to Anderson himself in the first over of the second day after adding 69. Meanwhile Shadab Khan kept the England fielders on their toes by taking quick singles with Shan Masood and that really frustrated England and added to their woes.

Trivia : Babar Azam’s test average of 64.57 is the highest average among all batsmen since 2018.

England were trailing by 326 runs in the first innings which was above par and a good score to win the test match for Pakistan. They were soon reduced to 12 for 3 courtesy some excellent fast bowling by Shaheen and Abbas. Mohammad Abbas was very accurate in his line and he played to his strength which is to make the batsman play every ball. Increasing the chances for the batsman to induce an error. Shaheen Afridi gave a tough time to right-handers with the swing that he gets from a very tall height while Naseem Shah was simply express pace. Another important part of their attack was Yasir Shah. He picked up four wickets each in both innings. The bounce that his bowling exploited off the pitch got him quite a lot of wickets and England definitely need to do their homework before facing him in the next test.

With a lead of 107 pakistan slipped to 137-8. A strong comeback by England in the bowling department brought them back in the game. Stokes who didn’t bowl in the last test and the first innings of this test match to avoid injury took wickets in his first spell along with Woakes’ contribution to reduce Pakistan to 277.

There were some very, very intriguing battles played out in this test match :-

Ollie Pope vs Naseem Shah

Pope came out to bat in a tough situation and survived an LBW shout against Naseem’s bowling. In the same over he drove one straight past Naseem for four. The contest was just heating up. Naseem gave him the long glare, time and again while he would remain calm and smile back. The battle continued the next day when the first hour of play was negotiated by Pope but finally Naseem Shah bowled am unplayable bouncer to send him packing.

Yasir Shah vs Joe Root

Root is a very good player of spin and he needed that skill against Yasir. In the first over itself Root had to face a delivery that spun and bounced. The keeper collected the ball almost at shoulder level. The next ball was overpitched and Root swept it away for four. He played the fine sweep also to him which goes down to fine-leg. Eventually Yasir Shah tried a googly was too straight to get on the back-foot and cut. He tried doing that but got caught behind. whereas, in the second innings Root did not get out to him. He played a very risky reverse sweep to a ball that pitched off the rough and a few cut shots that added to his innings of 42.

Trivia : Out of the 12 sessions that were played, Pakistan won 10 of them and England won the remaining

The highlight of the match for me was on day 3, the first hour of play. Only a total of 19 runs were added to the overnight score in 14 overs. Normally someone would say that’s boring to watch but what was on display was high quality test match cricket where Pope and Buttler did their best to soak up the pressure and not lose a wicket against the Pakistani fast bowlers who were very consistent and continued to build pressure on the batsmen. An equal battle was fought between bat and ball. The level of competitiveness and sporting rivalry that this format brings out of the players is unmatched. The greatest example is the contest that was fought between Warne and Tendulkar for such a long period of time.

Thank you for reading this. The next blog will be posted soon.

UPDATE : Ben stokes will miss the remainder of the series due to family reasons. He https://shortlegcricket.sport.blog/2020/08/08/woakes-buttler-chase-down-277-as-england-win-a-thriller-against-pakistan/https://shortlegcricket.sport.blog/2020/08/08/woakes-buttler-chase-down-277-as-england-win-a-thriller-agains