England were rewarded for getting funky in the dirt as their Jacks of all trades delivered with a few twists and turns to come.
And as strange as it may sound when the opposition has scored three hundreds led by Babar Azam’s 8th and come within a single of 500, Joe Root didn’t sound crazy when he called it a ‘brilliant day’ thanks to the seven wickets England’s bowlers took.
It included three for debutant Will Jacks, two more for Jack Leach, and one apiece for Ollie Robinson and James Anderson who finally opened his wicket taking account in his ninth country in a final session that saw four wickets fall for 88 runs.
And it is thanks to their relentless efforts, inventive field placings from skipper Ben Stokes, and a strong team camaraderie that there remains a chance for England to force a win rather than settle for a draw they are simply not interested in.
“It was a brilliant day,” said Root. “That last session, with all the hard work we put in leading into it, it all came to fruition really. It was very attritional so we had to be very creative and try a number of different things to search for wickets and we got our rewards.
“We stuck together and stuck to our task. We tried different things to make it fun and interesting and get them to think outside the box. The way we play our cricket it is about giving ourselves a chance of winning the game. We are not really interested in drawing the match. There is plenty more entertaining cricket to come.”
Root was pressed into extra work due to a knee injury to Liam Livingstone that could well spell the end of his tour, but he didn’t mind, using Leach’s head as a ball polishing surface at times. When things could have drifted Anderson fired up and got stuck into their batsmen with bowling skill and a few verbals, as did Robinson and it worked.
His 37,617th ball in Test cricket was clipped uppishly into the legside by Mohammad Rizwan and landed safely in the bucket hands of Stokes at short mid-wicket. It was a reward, not just for years of work at the sharp end of the game, but for a day of hard graft and competitiveness that Test cricket at its best is all about.
For all the adulation laid at the feet of England’s batsmen for the way they have delivered on the McStokes plan for aggressive cricket, it is actually in the field where they have been bravest by sticking with attacking fields until they got their wickets.
At one stage there was a short ring around the batsmen with six fielders at short backward point, short cover point, short cover, short extra cover, short mid-off and short mid-on. It was the same sort of aggression that earlier made Imam ul Haq struggle in a game of cat and mouse, to get to his 3rd Test hundred, eventually piercing the field for the landmark.
With Abdullah Shafique also getting to three figures, this became the first ever Test match in which all four openers scored hundreds in their first innings of the game, and it was the first time both opening partnerships had been worth more than 200.
Jacks took the first wicket of the day when his old Surrey mate Ollie Pope took a super catch from a thick edge standing up, but the crowning moment arrived when Babar became his second wicket and opened the game up.
“I had a bit of disbelief really,” said Jacks. “It was the first ball of my spell, probably a bit of a loosener outside off and he cut it to point! I was pretty happy, it was almost a game-changing moment. If we go on to win this Test then I guess that could be seen as a big moment in the game.”
