During the summer, as the Test side being reshaped by Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum found immediate success on home soil, there was very much a feeling among knowledgable cricket people that come their first trip abroad conditions in Pakistan would present much more of a challenge. But this team continues to write their own script, ignoring the conventions of the game, and even the flattest of pitches in Rawalpindi could not restrain them.
I have never seen such total alignment between a head coach, his captain, and the managing director, Rob Key, who selected them. I think of my international career, when it was an inviolable rule that individual players were given ownership of their game – they had been picked for their country and there was a prevailing view that you had reached the pinnacle of the game and it was not for someone else to tell you how to go out and play.
I always admired the way Alec Stewart and Graham Thorpe took the aggressive option if they could, particularly when players took that approach and it didn’t come off they were guaranteed to be hammered in the media.
That is the real sea change. I saw Mike Atherton on Sky praising Stokes’s declaration, which offered Pakistan a very achievable path to victory, explaining it would be fine for England to lose and that so long as we saw an entertaining product sport would be the winner.
This is a completely different message to anything I heard in 30 years in the game. The idea it would be acceptable for England to lose so long as they give it a go is one that never got anywhere near any team I was a part of. I played in an era when Ian Botham and Bob Willis would rip pieces out of you when you didn’t perform. Now – and it helps Key has key allies in extremely influential positions in the broadcast and written media – that pressure has almost disappeared.
Early in my career I had a conversation with Surrey’s Keith Medlycott, who had gone on England’s tour of West Indies in 1990 without making an international appearance. He told me he had been astonished by the pressure of Test cricket: “I can’t explain it, I can’t help you understand it, you just have to experience it,” he said. But over the past 10 months we have seen the way it feels being involved in the England team to completely flip. Clearly, it has been wonderfully liberating.
A number of things are aligning. The appointments, strategy and selection have fed into performances and are being backed up by powerful voices in the media, with the result that all the traditional consequences of failure for a player have been taken away.
What a great place this dressing room must be. Never in my career, at any level, have I seen players being told to go out, give it a crack and not to worry about the consequences. This freedom suits the young, modern-day player, with their innovative mindsets, their power, their range of shot.
It has come along at the perfect time for people such as Ollie Pope, Harry Brook and Will Jacks, guys who have grown up on T20 cricket, played in competitions around the world and have a mentality and a skillset that matches perfectly that of the team’s leadership.
In a different way it has also come at the perfect time for the 40-year-old Jimmy Anderson. How good it was to see him once again prove his versatility to those who believed that, however magnificent he has been in English conditions, he was destined to struggle in Pakistan. When you see Joe Root batting left-handed – it’s one thing being freed to challenge convention but this was almost verging on the disrespectful – you know something very unusual is happening.
Stokes spoke about the winning moment being an unbelievable high and after a victory like that, with his outstanding captaincy so fundamental, I can only imagine his sense of satisfaction. I’ve seen a lot of cricket and I just don’t know how they managed to win that game. To prise out those wickets on the final day was an unbelievable effort, but England almost looked like they were playing on a Saturday afternoon in local club cricket.
To demystify Test cricket, to completely take away the pressure of the environment, is a remarkable achievement. And what a contrast to Pakistan, playing in front of a large and expectant crowd, hosting a Test series against England for the first time since 2005 and chasing the game from the very first over when Zak Crawley hit three fours. They played very well in the first innings but England’s declaration put all the pressure back on them and they did not handle it particularly well.
This is just the third time England have won a Test in Pakistan, in 25 attempts. It is their second win there in the past 50 years. In any circumstances it is an exceptional achievement and this game will be long talked about. In an age when we are being saturated with so much short-format junk from all across the world, what a thrilling contrast this was.
Elsewhere in Asia, a football World Cup is being played and an England side is flourishing with a group of young players who have come through together, enjoy playing for their country and show athleticism, skill and a no-fear attitude. Both these teams are exciting and inspiring and the future could be brighter still.
