England close on series sweep against Pakistan: third men’s cricket Test, day two – as it happened
WICKET! Tongue c Ghori b Ali 15 (England 453 all out)
WICKET! Robinson c Masood b Razaullah 50 (England 409-9)
Fifty for Robinson!
WICKET! England 372-8 (Smith ct and b Razaullah 69)
WICKET! England 331-7 (Atkinson b Imran 19)
Lunch
England review! Atkinson not out 1
WICKET! England 293-6 (Lawrence b Imran 65)
WICKET! England 229-5 (Brook run out 75)
Dog stops play at Grace Road
Jamie Smith suffers thumb injury
Preamble
Meanwhile, in the County Championship, there’s been a first red-ball fifty for Rocky Flintoff, a big win for Yorkshire and some important news about a dog. Do join our queen of the county scene, Tanya Aldred.
“Not quite pub quiz,” says Pete Salmon, “but when my friends and I used to play the original Trivial Pursuit, we had three options for when you didn’t know the answer to a question. There was the Blue Whale; Karl Marx; or Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay.
“The first because it tended to be the biggest everything in nature (I still remember its tongue weighs the same as a cow), the second because every quote was him or Jesus, and the third because Richie Benaud would wax lyrical about him, despite 37 Tests, top score 89, average 33, plus 50 wickets at an average of 34. Seemed the best MOR cricketer ever, so was always the answer to obscure sports questions.”
Ha. Something tells me he might not be much use these days. And that’s a great factoid about the blue whale, but does its tongue weigh more than Josh Tongue?
And that will be tea. Or, as this is the Guardian, a bowl of Greek yoghurt with honey.
89th over: England 453 (Archer 32) Tongue, who was hit in the box just now, recovers to dab Mohammad Ali for four. Ali gets his revenge at the end of the over, but England’s lead is still a colossal 320.
And Mike Atherton reminds us that England were 39-3 in this innings. The partnerships since then have been 104, 86, 38, 41, 37 and now 44 – all of them bigger than the biggest stand in Pakistan’s innings, which was 26 by the last pair.
The only bright spark for Pakistan has been Razaullah, who has come from nowhere and bowled with fire and swing and personality. He finishes with the unusual figures of 23-0-148-4: four wickets, no maidens and oodles of promise.
88th over: England 448-9 (Archer 32, Tongue 11) Razaullah is able to continue, but may wish he wasn’t as Archer helps himself to a whip for two and a pull for six. His 32 has come off off only 27 balls, and England have 75 from the past ten overs. Rumours of Bazball’s death may have been exaggerated.
87th over: England 438-9 (Archer 23, Tongue 11) Ali continues, bowling to Tongue, and puts the plug in for five balls, only to concede four to a rather classy square drive. Meanwhile, dwn at fine leg, Razaullah gets a team-mate to give him some stretches and ends up doing a headstand. Oh, to be 21 again.
86th over: England 434-9 (Archer 23, Tongue 7) No, Abbas wasn’t changing ends. It’s still Razaullah, who finds a short ball being cut away with brutal glee by Archer. A few singles lift England to a lead of 300.
85th over: England 426-9 (Archer 17, Tongue 5) Mohammad Abbas has been taken off, possibly to change ends, or possibly because he’s knackered after bowling about 50pc more overs in this series than any Englishman. Mohammad Ali takes over and Archer swings him away for six over deep square. That completes the set for Jofra: he’s the only batter in the series to have hit a six in each of the three Tests. When Ali turns an attempted yorker into a full toss, Tongue off-drives it for four. The new ball has gone for 42 in five overs.
84th over: England 415-9 (Archer 10, Tongue 1) Josh Tongue is waiting for the yorker and clips it adroitly off his toes to get off the mark. Archer dabs for two and then skies a pull, sending it high but not quite far enough to give Razaullah his five-for. Pakistan’s new Action Man has to settle for 21-0-131-4.
Gone! A loose drive gives Shan Masood a simple catch at cover, so Robinson has to settle for a round half-century. And Razaullah has made one more thing happen.
83rd over: England 409-8 (Robinson 50, Archer 5) Robinson seems to have rattled the mighty Mohammad Abbas, who produces possibly the first long hop of his career and is duly slapped for four. Robinson adds a single to cruise to 50 off only 46 balls. It’s his second Test fifty and his first in front of a home crowd, and it gets a big hand from the Brummies. When I mentioned a hundred just now, I thought I was joking.
Archer nicks one, but it doesn’t carry, and then there are four leg-byes. Insult to injury.
82nd over: England 400-8 (Robinson 45, Archer 5) Razaullah’s pace and zest, and this three wickets, have earned him a go with the new ball. After mostly tailing in with the old ball, he now produces a lovely outswinger, too good to get a nick out of Jofra. Then he relapses onto the pads and Jofra tucks for two. Razaullah thinks he’s got Robinson LBW, but it’s too high. Still making things happen.
81st over: England 396-8 (Robinson 45, Archer 2) Robinson sees that shiny new cherry and his eyes light up as if he was bowling with it. He goes down the track and belts Abbas’s first ball to midwicket for four. The keeper, Ghazi Ghori, comes up to the stumps to put a stop to that, but Robinson is ready with his retort: a slog for six! And he adds a flick off the hip for two to make 12 off the over. He could be in trouble with the Global Guild of Medium-Pace Masters.
Babar Azam takes the new ball straight away, and hands it to Mohammad Abbas.
80th over: England 384-8 (Robinson 33, Archer 2) Razaullah continues, running in hard, but drifting onto the pads, where even a No 8 can make hay. Robinson plays a clip to midwicket for two, a glance for four and a flick for a single. He’s about a third of the way to the hundred that has eluded every specialist batter in this series.
79th over: England 377-8 (Robinson 26, Archer 2) Saim Ayub continues with his friendly slow stuff, and England’s opening bowlers help themselves to a few singles.
78th over: England 374-8 (Robinson 24, Archer 1) So Razaullah has a magnificent set of figures: 18-0-115-3. A man who makes things happen.
Thanks Rob and afternoon everyone. England lead by 239, which is about 40 more than Pakistan have managed in any of their innings so far. If Ben Stokes was still in charge, he would have declared by now.
Drinks That’s all from me – the great Tim de Lisle will guide you through the second half of the day.
Razaullah gets his third wicket! Smith tries to turn a straight delivery off the pads and gets a leading edge back to the bowler, who takes the catch and emits a hard-faced yell in Smith’s direction. Another England batter has made a daddy fifty.
77th over: England 368-7 (Smith 65, Robinson 23) The occasional spinner Saim Ayub returns to the attack. There’s an unsuccessful review for caught behind when Smith pushes at a ball down the leg side; it brushed the pad but missed his bat by a mile. Smith charges the next ball and drags it on the bounce to Ali at cow corner.
“So I was in a team in the Geddington village quiz,” says David Acaster. “Peak quizzing, we can all agree on that. Picture round – name the cities shown in pictures of important public buildings. We got stuck on the last one, until one of my teammates pointed out it was embroidered on my polo shirt, with ‘Helsinki’ embroidered underneath it.”
76th over: England 363-7 (Smith 63, Robinson 20) The non-striker Smith scrambles to make his ground after Robinson takes a quick single on the off side. I think he’d have been out with a direct hit.
Two from Imran’s over; England lead by 230.
75th over: England 361-7 (Smith 62, Robinson 19) “Regarding Nasser’s statgasm (over 71), I’m not greatly surprised,” writes Nicholas Way. “Robinson tends to get lbws with his nagging accuracy, while Tongue likes nothing better than splattering the stumps. So although the keepers are taking fewer catches, they could reasonably ‘claim an assist’ for lbws caused by them standing up to the stumps.”
I agree – it’s not a surprise, especially not with Matt Henry and New Zealand also using the tactic so effectively, but it does reinforce the feeling that there has been a profound change to Test cricket since the Ashes.
74th over: England 357-7 (Smith 60, Robinson 17) Robinson moves to 17 from as many balls by clattering Imran behind square for four. It’s all a bit too easy.
73rd over: England 353-7 (Smith 60, Robinson 13) Robinson chips Abbas jauntily over wide mid-on for four – it almost went for six – before dragging a disgusting mow past leg stump for another boundary. This is a win-win situation for Robinson; it’s getting murky at Edgbaston so he’ll be very happy to bowl.
72nd over: England 343-7 (Smith 59, Robinson 4) Ollie Robinson briefly turns into Viv Richards, walking across to flick Imran through midwicket for four.
I’ve just noticed that the weather forecast isn’t great after 4pm, so we can probably forget about a two-day Test.
“I’m torn by the concept of daddy fifties,” writes Eddy Nason. “While I agree it would be great to have everyone convert their starts into big runs, I also feel like everyone getting to 60-75 is a recipe for fast, sizeable team scores. This feels like the tension in test cricket of team vs. individual. Perhaps we should start looking only at daddy partnerships (like our bowlers hunting in packs)?”
Or, given past events, we could never use the D-word on the OBO again. (It’s my fault for bringing it up, and for the past events.)
71st over: England 339-7 (Smith 59, Robinson 0) Smith plays and misses at a jaffa from Abbas. But then Abbas gets greedy and spears one down the leg side for four byes. Poor Ghazi Ghori has conceded 18 byes on his debut despite doing very little wrong.
Smith slugs four over mid-on to extend England’s lead to 206. His keeping has been superb all summer, and now he has quietly returned to form with the bat.
Here’s a statgasm c/o Nasser Hussain on Sky Sports: 46.5% of the wickets to fall in Tests this summer have been bowled or LBW. That’s the highest percentage since the 1940s.
70th over: England 331-7 (Smith 55, Robinson 0) Ollie Robinson is the new batter.
That’ll do. Atkinson is cleaned up by a cracking inswinger from Mohammad Imran that deflects off the pad and knocks back the off stump. No blame attached to Atkinson; it was a beauty.
69th over: England 330-6 (Smith 54, Atkinson 19) Mohammad Abbas replaces Razaullah, who has unique figures of 17-0-109-2. Ghori moves back up to the stumps, secure in the assumption that Abbas is less likely to spear one down the leg side. He’s right, at least in that over, which brings just a single for Smith.
68th over: England 329-6 (Smith 53, Atkinson 19) Atkinson waves Imran to the cover boundary. For a lower-order bater he plays some seriously good-looking shots. An errant delivery bursts through the gloves of Ghori and runs away for four byes, at which point Ghori decides to stand back. England lead by 196 runs.
“Buenos tardes from sunny Ibiza, Rob,” writes Guy Hornsby. “There’s worse places to follow the cricket. It’s sad that the result of this Test was unlikely to be in doubt, so the subplots are where it’s at. For all of England’s dominance, having another innings when no batter has made a ton feels a little disappointing. I’m very happy for Emilio Gay, and hope he gets more runs, yet Pakistan are unlikely to make us bat again at this rate.
“I’m not whingeing; it’s more that you wouldn’t expect India or Australia to miss out this much. As much as some are still learning, if we want a side to be challenging at the top, we should be ruthless, even against meek opposition. It’s what great sides do. We’re some distance from that, but the potential is there.”
There was a great line on this from the Telegraph’s Rob Bagchi, who wrote that England have entered the era of daddy fifties.
67th over: England 320-6 (Smith 52, Atkinson 15) Razaullah zips a good delivery past Smith’s outside edge, is clattered for four by Atkinson and then beats Atkinson with a beauty. Life in miniature.
“At an oil site on Barrow Island (off NW Australia) some years ago my Brit college and I joined a team for a ‘chook quiz’,” begins Ray Wells. “So called because first prize was a cooked chook. One question was ‘Where is Karl Marx buried?’ So far as the quizmaster was concerned, the correct answer was London. We had a point deducted for being smart-arses and writing Highgate Cemetery.”
66th over: England 313-6 (Smith 51, Atkinson 10) An inswinger from Imran flies down the leg side for four byes. Oh dear. Pakistan don’t need Jill Tyrell to tell them that things could get nasty here – they trail by 180 runs and a two-day defeat is not beyond the realms.
Pakistan have only been involved in a single two-day Test, that fiasco against Australia in Sharjah 24 years ago.
65th over: England 308-6 (Smith 51, Atkinson 10) Razaullah continues to target the stumps. The rewards are high but so is the risk; when he overpitches slightly, Atkinson punches a superb boundary through mid-on.
Later in the over, a rancid long hop is walloped for four by Smith. That brings up a dominant half-century from just 54 balls – and takes Smith’s Test average at Edgbaston to 209.
Afternoon session Razaullah is going to continue after lunch.
“What do you make of reports that Josh Tongue unveiled a wobble-steam ball yesterday?” asks Luke Dealtry. “Was he doing it at high pace or did it bring him down? Presumably if he keeps his pace he will be even better.”
Wobble-steam? It’s all smoke and mirrors if you ask me.
“It’s Fray Bentos (56th over), as I’m sure half the cricket-following population of Uruguay will already have told you in huffy emails (as they probably haven’t even had their morning mate yet),” writes Matthew Clapham. “It’s actually a town on the Uruguay-Argentina border, which gave its name to a beef processing plant and hence to the corned beef and meat pie brand.
“‘Fray’ itself is Spanish for ‘friar’, although only as a title, as in ‘Friar Tuck’ (appropriately enough). So Fray Bentos (town) is named after ‘Friar Bentos’, a religious hermit who lived there.
“The meat industry took off courtesy of the Liebig Extract of Meat Company (great branding!), the same guy high school chemistry fans will remember from his Liebig condenser.
“What’s in a name, eh? Enjoy a pie or two at lunchtime!”
Do they sell them in Pret?
“Following Richard O’Hagan’s fury (over 59), I can vent similar frustration of an erroneous quizmaster – and at the Royal Geographical Society’s Xmas Quiz, too!” writes Martin Wright. “The question was: ‘Which city hosts the annual Shandur Polo Festival?’ As many of your Pakistani readers will surely know, it’s not staged in a city at all – it’s held outside the town of Chitral, high in the Hindu Kush (one of the most beautiful regions in the world).
“Having been lucky enough to go there for work, I knew the answer. But ‘city’ confused me. So I thought I must have got it wrong, and since the nearest actual city is Peshawar, I opted for that.
“Imagine my reaction when the answer was given as Chitral. ‘It’s not a city! It’s NOT A CITY’, I shouted at the confused MC, while my embarrassed team-mates looked away. I don’t think there’s a video of me correcting him. But there should be.”
You’ve always been the quizmaster.
Lunchtime reading
The ball is short outside off. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi goes to pull it, hoiks it high to deep midwicket, is out for 44 off 37 balls. Almost immediately, a portion of the 12,000 fans who have risen at dawn to queue outside the Chepauk Stadium for free tickets begin to vacate their seats. The Duleep Trophy final in Chennai between East Zone and South Zone is scheduled for five days and has been going for barely an hour. But for some, the show is already over.
Of course, Sooryavanshi is part of the reason the final is taking place in Chennai in the first place. It was originally slated for the national academy on the outskirts of Bengaluru, only to be moved in order to accommodate the thousands of fans desperate to glimpse the child prince of Indian cricket in the flesh. Sooryavanshi is the hottest player in the world right now, a 15-year-old left-handed jaw-dropping genius with records spilling out of his pockets. But when it comes to red-ball cricket, the classic form of the game, he’s still – by any objective measure – not very good.
Going into this final, Sooryavanshi’s first-class average is a shade above 23, rendering him statistically a less effective red-ball batter than Craig Overton. Here, in perfect batting conditions, he scores a brisk and brash 44 in a mammoth total of 708, before dancing down the pitch and getting stumped for eight in the second innings as East Zone chase the outright win. None of which really tells us anything conclusive. The numbers are largely subservient to the project, the hypothetical, the burning question with implications not just for Sooryavanshi, not just for India, but very possibly for cricket itself.
64th over: England 299-6 (Smith 47, Atkinson 5) A quiet over from Mohammad Imran concludes an excellent morning session for England, who scored 143 runs in 25 overs to take a decisive grip on the third Test. The only frustration was that Harry Brook and Dan Lawrence missed out on centuries; Brook (75) ran himself on and Lawrence (65) dragged Imran onto his stumps.
63rd over: England 298-6 (Smith 47, Atkinson 5) Atkinson throws his hands at a wide one from Razaullah and gets four over the slip cordon. There’s time for one more over before lunch.
Incidentally, that was Dan Lawrence’s seventh Test half-century. Only three England players, all Middlesex legends, have scored more fifties without going on to reach three figures: John Emburey (10), Fred Titmus (10) and Mike Brearley (9). England’s new coach Stephen Fleming also had conversion issues at the start of his Test career – he scored ten fifties before finally making a hundred – so he might have some advice for Lawrence.
“A very good friend of mine, when we were but 18/19 and impoverished, missed a solo spot price question in our pub quiz that would have earned us 80 odd quid (a tidy sum back then even between four),” writes Andrew Benzeval. “The question was ‘What was the name of the wolf in Due South?’ We three who remained at the table sat back in glee, as he obviously knew this, but the look on his face said otherwise sadly. He blamed momentary brain fade.”
Gus Atkinson is given out LBW to a fullish delivery from Razaullah, but replays show a slight inside-edge. Atkinson didn’t realise he’d nicked it – he reviewed because it thought it was misisng leg stump.
Edit: I was talking nonsense. Replays show Atkinson looked at the inside edge of his bat as he reviewed.
62nd over: England 294-6 (Smith 47, Atkinson 1) Gus Atkinson survives a big LBW appeal first ball. He was hit on the back thigh by a nipbacker that would have bounced over the stumps. Imran wanted to review but the wicketkeeper Ghori rightly advised against it.
“In Cambridge, where I live,” begins Paul Haynes, “wrong answers in pub quizzes are often met with comments such as ‘I should’ve got that one – I actually did my PhD thesis on it’.”
A first Test wicket for Mohammad Imran, but no first Test hundred for Dan Lawrence. He dabbed lazily at a wider delivery, dragged it onto the stumps and screamed “No!” as he realised what had happened. For a split-second he looked like he might demolish the stumps with his bat. That will sting: it was an avoidable dismissal and there appeared to be a Test century with Lawrence’s name on it.
61st over: England 293-5 (Lawrence 65, Smith 47) Smith shapes to uppercut Razaullah, realises the ball won’t be high enough and under-edges it short of the slip cordon. The next delivery is too straight and muscled to the midwicket boundary. Smith top-edges a hook for four more to move to 47. Edgbaston is being kind to him again: he scored 272 runs against India a year ago.
“Dear Rob,” begins Will West. “Bonzour (sic) from Mahé, Seychelles! Am I deluding myself (“I can handle despair, it’s the hope I can’t stand..”) that we have a really exciting batting lineup coalescing here? Not the sternest of Tests now I admit, but some sublime talent, surely.
“So here’s a wild idea; move Root to 7. It takes pressure off him to focus on captaincy; it forces the youngers to shoulder responsibility; plus as the fielding side it is always unspeakably demoralising to feel you have fought through the batting only to have someone dig in and score from the tail. So: Duckett, Gay, Cox, Bethell, Brook, Smith, Root, Atkinson, Archer, Robinson, Tongue. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Probably a load of wild West puns, given your surname and admission that it’s a wild idea. That and Joe Root being left high and dry on 17 not out once a month. I agree that, on paper, England’s batting line-up is seriously exciting – but right now only Brook feels like a sure thing, and even he hasn’t scored a Test hundred for 14 months. Bethell, Cox, Gay and to a lesser extent Smith are still learning to play Test cricket, Duckett has had a lean 18 months and Root has the LBW blues.
60th over: England 283-5 (Lawrence 65, Smith 37) Smith, who looks in excellent touch, dismisses Imran through midwicket for four to bring up the fifty partnership. Pakistan are starting to look resigned to their fate.
“I got a question about the number of different species of owl in the UK wrong,” says Richard O’Hagan, “but only because the question-master had the wrong answer themselves (they said there were five, there are actually six – barn, tawny, long-eared, short-eared, little and eagle).”
Please tell me there’s a video of you correcting them.
59th over: England 277-5 (Lawrence 65, Smith 32) Razaullah returns to the attack. Pace can be a mixed blessing; Smith uses Razaullah’s to score three twos in the over. Razaullah is going at more than a run a ball, with figures of 13-0-80-2. That’s surprising because he hasn’t bowled that many loose deliveries.
“I can sympathise with David Hopkins,” says John Swan. “The exact same thing happened to me, except my T-shirt/unoffered answer was Depeche Mode. Sigh.”
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.