England in Making Up History

Pak vs Eng: 1^st Test Match, A History in Making

England was only able to confirm a healthy playing 11 two and a half hours before the match. The illness has swept through the England camp.

The match would have been postponed for a full day if not for the absence of sufficient players from the sick camp. Pakistan could have done with a day’s delay given how things turned out. England may want to send them away for another 17 years if they continue with sick health.

England only played 75 overs, but their score of 506-4 was the most any team has ever scored on the first day of a Test. Their run rate of 6.74 would have brought them to 607 if they had been given the full 90.

Pakistan has played like a team that had never played before. The pitch is also very dead. Having said this, downplaying England’s accomplishment would be like claiming that The Beatles only sold a few records.

Australia needed 152.4 overs to score 598-4 declared in the ongoing first Test against the West Indies in Perth. This tells us how different the England team is from the rest of the world.

Ben Duckett ran the risk of becoming notorious for shoving James Anderson with a pint of beer in a Perth nightclub. Due to a broken hand, he had to effectively learn how to hold a bat again during his six years away from Test cricket.

At the end of the summer, he was brought back into the Test team and given a second chance in Rawalpindi. He scored his first century despite being the worst victim of the virus.

Pope appears to be chosen as England’s next captain after his promotion to number three. He is doing so well. He helped himself to the 90-ball hundred, despite the distraction of playing behind the stumps for the ill Ben Foakes.

Brook played poorly in the T20 World Cup. He has only played one Test for England and scored the winning run. He could have easily been moved aside to accommodate England’s spin-bowling all-rounders.

He only missed Gilbert Jessop’s 120-year-old record of 76 balls by four deliveries. He took Saud Shakeel for six fours in a single over and closed his innings in on the fastest 100s by an England batter.

Liam Livingstone, one of the best white-ball destroyers and Will Jacks, who owns a century in The Hundred, is still to come. Ben Stokes has already reached 34 not out from 15 balls.

This is definitely a novel approach to Test cricket play.

Where will the England team stop after giving such a huge score in the first innings? Will Pakistan be able to achieve anything out of this Test Match? On what approach did Pakistan make this type of pitch and be a victim of that themselves?

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