The finest of fine glances off Stokes’ gloves puts paid to that. How far can Buttler and Pope get?
Wow, that was about as fine a grazing of the glove as I’ve ever seen. You could argue that Stokes was a bit unlucky there, but that’s what happens when you get one in the rough.
That is the second killer delivery Pope has got out to in this match. Pakistan’s attack is so good and now that the pitch has worn and is a bit up and down, they’re going to canter home. 100+ run victory on the cards
Yeah, there’s no way back for England here, barring real boy’s own adventure stuff.
Buttler’s going to hit out here, so we may get some entertaining fireworks at least.
Yeah, scoring has got a lot quicker in the last 20 mins. Initiative seems to be with England for the moment.
A long long way to go but if these two can keep this going after tea for another 30 mins or so suddenly the total starts to heave into view.
The first psychological milestone - less than 100 needed - is about to be crossed. Getting past 200 is the next. If England teach the second without losing a wicket it’ll be a bit of a test of character for Pakistan.
How many times has the phrase, “It’s the hope that gets you” been used in this thread? My poor fingernails!
Winviz still 63% for Pakistan currently. Basically the same as overnight
Winviz now has England ahead. Of course, two quick wickets and they’re screwed.
Match now very much on a knife edge.
18 overs to the new ball, but Pakistan need it that’ll be too late
England now in that odd state where they’ve realised they can win, and so now don’t want to throw it away.
Well done to the Poms. I wouldn’t have bet on them this morning, but that was an excellent performance at the end. Amazing work by Buttler and Woakes.
Told ya.
Our batting can lose matches any match and what the fuck was the captaincy when they started counter attacking.
It was literally the worst captaincy I saw. Panic. I mean a couple of fluke hits and suddenly here have all the singles and doubles you want. I mean you have attacking bowlers and a 150 runs to play with, WTF, make them hit they will get out.
Why was Abbas and Shadab bowling when clearly they were no threat. Make them face Naseem and Shaheen and Yasir. Just because they went for a few initially, THEY ARE YOUR EFFING STRIKE BOWLERS
It was poor captaincy that let England settle - Ali didn’t seem to have any sort of reply once Buttler and Woakes started a counter-attack - that should have failed, because Pakistan should have the bowlers to take advantage, but he didn’t use them. The commentary pointed out a fair number of odd field positions as well, and he wasn’t as attacking when he should have attacked and then got even more defensive, giving away singles, when he could have pressed and forced big shots.
I was going to suggest that Pakistan lost the game with yesterdays batting, and they did squander an opportunity to put the game completely beyond England. But they lost it today, in the field, because they just expected that the win would come, and England have become a bit good at overturning expectations like that recently.
This should be a really good series, both teams are flawed in different ways, but they are both great to watch, if only because they are both so inconsistent. I wouldn’t put it past England to finally win a first test of a series, only to go on and lose the next two.
Yeah, sorry, but you get no points for this prediction. Not because you didn’t predict the outcome of the game, but because your argument before today’s play was almost completely devoid of logic. It was, as Cumbrian correctly noted, little more than pre-emptive lowering of expectations.
You made no mention at all of the key issue that you now recognize was central to the result - the poor captaincy and bad use of the bowling attack. You argued that England’s “top and deep batting order” would do it easily and that Pakistan had only one dangerous bowler they could rely on. And yet that “top and deep batting order” lost five wickets cheaply, and got lucky thanks to a couple of good performances combined with some brain-fart captaincy decisions by Pakistan.
Pakistan should have won this game, something that even you seem to recognize, to wit:
Exactly. Which makes all of your tortured logic last night rather difficult to understand.
Methinks I should spend more time thinking.
I hit the hay with England 0-16 so saw bugger all of it.
Bloody good chase.
I was going to be nasty and call this a well-undeserved win for England. On reflection that’s too harsh - they did just about enough with both bat and ball to stay in with a chance until the fourth-innings collapse - and then Buttler and Woakes gave a lesson in how to win from a bad position against opponents who think the job is over. Yes they were lucky that the ball/pitch suddenly stopped doing anything - and there were a fair few mishits that dropped safe - but you need luck in this game. (Just ask Ollie Pope, who got done by absolute jaffas in both innings).
So where does that leave us? Pakistan’s bowling attack looks handy if the ball’s doing anything - either in the air or off the pitch - but (like England’s) they can look a bit bereft if it isn’t. Yes, they should have won today - but the same attack that couldn’t break the Buttler-Woakes partnership was also the one that took England from 85-1 to 120-5 and the batsmen had their chance to kill the game off yesterday. In the first innings Shan Masood (very unlucky to miss out on MoM) made 156 and everything else added up to 170. In the second innings he made 0 and everything else added up to 169. That’s not the good sort of consistency.
For England, it’s stop me if you’ve heard this before. The seam attack is quality - at least in English conditions - with or without Anderson. Archer is still there as much on potential as performance. Dom Bess is not yet a world-class spinner (and Buttler is not helping him). There’s still no No. 3 which means Root and Stokes are batting too high. And then there’s Buttler, who has shown again that he can win Test matches - but how long do you stick with a less-than-perfect keeper, who plays a match-turning innings about once every other series and averages 25 between times?
Random stat from the BBC - this is exactly the second time England have successfully chased a 4th-innings total after being 5 down with 150 to get. The previous occasion was Jessop’s match in 1902. You just don’t win Test matches consistently from 130-5 in both innings, no matter how good your 6/7/8 are.
I feel for Masood, who scored nearly half of Pakistan’s first innings total by himself to get them into a commanding position, and then saw his captain throw it away in the afternoon on day four. One of the good things about low scoring games is that, actually, a hundred partnership at any point can really turn the match, and hundred partnerships aren’t that rare.
A genuine plus for England is that this was done almost entirely without the help of Super Stokes, except he did sneak on to bowl a few overs late day three and picked up a couple.