66 2GM Thursday August 6 2020 | the times
SportEngland v Pakistan: First Test
Babar was at
his fluent best,
playing some
gorgeous drivesIt was a gloomy, overcast and rain-in-
terrupted day at Emirates Old Trafford.
What shafts of light there were came
from the blade of Babar Azam, the great
batting hope of Pakistan cricket. At
25 years of age, he should be entering
his prime and an England tour, in front
of a worldwide audience glued to tele-
vised cricket because of Covid-19
restrictions, is a perfect opportunity for
him to show off his talent.
England supporters may be more
unaware of his standing than some,
because he has played only one Test
innings in this country before now, and
that an interrupted one when Ben
Stokes fractured his forearm at Lord’s
two years ago. He was discomfited
occasionally by the short ball yesterday,
a reminder of that previous encounter,
but other than that and some early,
understandable wariness, he began the
series confidently to raise the tourists’
hopes for the summer.
With only 49 overs possible, it was
not a straightforward day to be a bats-
man, with interruptions coming (brief-
ly) in the opening session and then a
lengthy three-hour delay in the after-
noon, before bad light brought a pre-
mature closure. England made life
harder for themselves than they might
have done, by bowling very poorly in
the hour after lunch and missing three
chances of varying degrees of difficulty,
two of them by Jos Buttler, both stand-
ing up to the off spin of Dom Bess.
To express surprise, because this is
Buttler’s home ground, would be of lit-
tle relevance. Buttler neither plays for
Lancashire very much, nor does he
keep wicket for them on the rare occa-
sions he does. The mistakes he made
yesterday will nag at him; though not
entirely straightforward, they were
chances he would hope to accept. They
both came off Shan Masood, the left-
handed opener, on 45 each time, a catch
first of all as the batsman propped for-
ward and then a stumping, after a wild
charge, with Buttler surprised by the
steep bounce on each occasion.
More concerning, in the context of
the game, was the bounce that
Bess extracted, given Pakistan’s
enterprising team selec-
tion. While England
were unchanged —
Ben Stokes
underwent a
morning fit-
ness test, bowl-
ing at less than
full pace, so Joe Root was
encouraged to keep faith
with the seamers who had
bowled so well against
West Indies — Pakistan
picked adventurously, as is
often their way.
For the first time in England
since 2010, when Danish Ka-
neria and Shahid Afridi
played in a neutral Test
against Australia, two leg
spinners in Yasir Shah and
Shadab Khan will be seen
in operation.
Because of that, it was no
surprise that Azhar Ali batted
first on winning the toss. At the
coin flip, Azhar moved to shake
Root’s hand in the time-honoured way
before belatedly realising that this was
a no-no in a Covid-19 world, and
smiled, embarrassed at his mistake.
After 45 minutes, when his openers
had safely negotiated the new-ball
combination of Stuart Broad and James
Anderson, Azhar’s smile on the balcony
was a genuine one: there would have
been nerves at the start, but the openers
did a good job of settling them.
Pakistan’s chances, you would think,
rest squarely on the shoulders of their
batsmen, and the openers fared better
than most from foreign climes in the
last few years, running sharp singles
well and defending with precision.
Anderson did snake three balls past
Shan’s outside edge in his opening two
overs but other than that, the opening
hour produced fewer than expectedEmirates Old Trafford (first day of five;
Pakistan won toss) Pakistan have scored
139 for two wicketsBrilliant Babar in mood to
Scoreboard
PAKISTAN First Innings R B
Shan Masood
not out46 152Abid Ali
b Archer
Nipped back, through gate16 37*Azhar Ali
lbw b Woakes
Full, front pad, middle stump0 6Babar Azam
not out69 100Extras
(b 1, lb 6, nb 1)8TOTAL (2 wkts; 49 overs) 139
Asad Shafiq, Shadab Khan, †Mohammad
Rizwan, Yasir Shah, Shaheen Afridi,
Mohammad Abbas, Naseem Shah to bat.
Fall of wickets 1-36, 2-43.
Bowling Anderson 8-2-32-0; Broad
11-4-24-0; Woakes 8-2-14-1; Archer
10-3-23-1; Bess 9-1-30-0; Root 3-0-9-0.Umpires R Kettleborough and
R Illingworth (both Eng). TV Umpire
M Gough (Eng). Match Referee
C Broad (Eng).ENGLAND
RJ Burns, DP Sibley, *JE Root, BA Stokes,
OJD Pope, †JC Buttler, CR Woakes, DM
Bess, JC Archer, SCJ Broad, JM AndersonMike Ather ton
Chief Cricket
Correspondent
England v Pakistan
alarms. It was a triumph for Shan,
especially, given his previous troubles
against Anderson in the UAE and
England.
The floodlights were on and cloud
cover was constant, so it was a good
effort to get through the first hour, but
the introduction of Jofra Archer
changed things. A sharp, early bouncer
gave Abid Ali a sniff of some leather,
and then a fuller ball that nipped back
off the seam, squeezed through the
opener’s defences and rocked back the
off stump, sent Abid’s Test average
plummeting from 107 to 84.25. Two
overs in, Archer looked on his game.
Chris Woakes, too, carried on from
where he left off last week, creating
problems from the James Anderson
End. He picked up one wicket before
lunch — Azhar was trapped on the
move, reviewing a leg-before to no avail
— and might have had more. His first
ball to Babar was very close to off
stump, and an edge off Shan slipped
through a diving Dom Sibley’s fingers
at third slip. The morning session was
hard fought, full of excellent cricket.
Lunch seemed not to agree with
England’s bowlers, because they
bowled more bad balls in the first hour
afterwards than they had bowled in the
entire previous Test. Eleven bounda-
ries came in 15 overs, 60 runs in all, as
Babar in particular eased himself into
top form, while Shan was content to
admire the right-hander’s stroke play.
Babar is easy on the eye, a worthy suc-
cessor to a languid middle-order bats-
man like Mohammad Yousuf, his off
side driving a particular delight.
Root started with his best combina-
tion after the break — Broad and
Anderson — but the latter in particular
misfired, with 19 runs coming from his
three overs. His mood was not
improved when the third umpire inter-
vened to call a no-ball in the 31st over —
this is the first Test where the third
umpire is mandated to check every ball
of the match — and when Babar cut the
next ball for four, Anderson was
removed from the attack.
Bess, who had not bowled a ball in the
previous match, was given a go then.
Babar looked as comfortable against
spin as he had against facing seam, and
drove Bess through the off side and
over the on side for classy boundaries.
He contributed 34 runs to the 50-run
partnership with Shan, and Pakistan’s
100 came up in the 37th over. When
Buttler fluffed the catch off Shan from
Bess’s bowling, England’s miserable
hour after lunch was complete.
Archer completed five balls on the
resumption, with signs that England
had discussed Babar at length and were
intent on testing his courage for the
remainder of the day with some short
stuff, but then the umpires cautioned
Root that the light was not good
enough for fast bowlers. Bess and
Root bowled seven overs, then, just
enough time for Bess to lure Shan
from his crease, only to survive
the stumping chance. Babar
finished the day by thumping
Bess down the ground for an
emphatic boundary.
England had a decent open-
ing session but were poor after
that. “We weren’t as good as we
should have been,” Chris Silver-
wood, the England head coach,
said. No doubt he expressed
himself more force-
fully to his
players.68.57
Babar’s average over
the past two years
— 1,303 runs from
14 Tests, including
five centuries1
Only one player in the
past two years with more
than 1,000 Test runs has a
better average than
Babar: Steve Smith
(73.42), from nine
matches