Three lefties and a leggie sounds like a red barbershop quartet not the Test match bowling attack fielded by Pakistan. But having harmonised well at Lord’s, cricket’s cathedral, to achieve well-earned victory, the quartet cut a discordant note at Old Trafford where they contributed to their team’s defeat by a record margin.
The huge distance between those two outcomes will puzzle many fans. After all, Pakistan’s bowlers are several notches above Sri Lanka’s and England did not beat them so utterly. But conditions dictate much of what happens in cricket and they differed markedly between London and Manchester.
At Lord’s, a sluggish pitch lacking much bounce or sideways movement, played right into the way Pakistan’s bowlers like to operate, which is to seek lbws.
With the Lord’s slope always suggestive of some movement down it, at least in the minds of the batsmen, Yasir Shah, in particular, was able to bowl his wrist-spin fairly straight at a middle and off-stump line. It was a tactic that brought several modes of dismissal into play as well enabling him to keep the runs down. English batsmen have long been nervous of using their feet to wrist-spin, something you need to do on slow surfaces. As such, they did not drive Yasir much at Lord’s.
Although he does not turn the ball as much as Shane Warne, Yasir shares much of his accuracy, his brisk skidding deliveries giving little away. England, perhaps after facing him on spin-friendly pitches of the United Arab Emirates nine months ago, were mesmerised and without spinning the ball very much he took 10 wickets in the match, eight of them bowled or lbw.
There was one brilliant bit of improvisation and captaincy that went in to the second-innings dismissal of Jonny Bairstow, England’s most in-form batsman. Bairstow is an aggressive ball-striker and Misbah-ul-Haq gave Yasir a field which reflected that with men ready to pounce on any loose shots.
But Bairstow sat tight and played Yasir mainly off the back foot. At which point, Misbah switched Yasir to the Pavilion End, so the slope might bring the ball into the right-hander. That made Bairstow’s tactic of playing off the back foot more risky, should the ball shoot down the slope, keep low, or the batsman misread the length. In the event all three probably occurred and Bairstow was bowled for 48, any hopes of England winning the Test going with him.
At Old Trafford, the extra bounce and pace in the pitch made playing Yaisr off the back foot easier for batsmen, thus reducing the likelihood of being bowled or lbw, the spinner’s two favourite modes of dismissal. That forced Yasir – who is unlikely to have come across a pitch as unyielding to spin and as true of bounce as the one at Old Trafford – to adopt alternative strategies beyond his comfort zone.
Instead of bowling for lbw he was forced to try to have batsmen caught at slip or on the drive. That meant beating them in the flight or with expansive turn, neither especially within his command. Bad balls ensued, which were picked off mercilessly by Joe Root and Alastair Cook, England’s two best batsmen operating at the top of their game.
When that happens, a chain reaction is triggered – Yasir strives to produce even more magic balls, more bad ones ensue, and England’s scoring rate races out of control. The captain then turns to the pace bowlers to stem the flow and perhaps pick up a wicket or two in the process. But their role has always been to bowl short, sharp bursts and act as a strike force with Yasir doing the donkey work. Suddenly Plan A is gone and Plan B, always weaker, is adopted to limit the damage, which, as we know, it did not and England racked up a mammoth 589-8 declared.
It is unusual to have three left-arm pace bowlers in one side. Although the data suggests they are more valuable than right-arm pace bowlers in T20 cricket, the ball needs to swing for that to be true in Test matches, something it did at Lord’s, but not for long at Old Trafford.
The swing at Lord’s was reverse-swing, something discovered by Pakistan. Although most teams understand how to achieve it now, it still requires skilful manipulation of the ball’s condition and decent pace (83 mph minimum) to harness its potency. This was achieved by Mohammad Amir and Wahab Riaz in the first Test but not in any meaningful way in the second, the lush outfield at Old Trafford (almost certainly a deliberate tactic by England) was a clear hindrance.
Although Amir bowled superbly with the new ball, swinging it conventionally to twice dismiss Alex Hales, their failure to achieve reverse-swing left another big plank of their strategy under-utilised.
England’s bowlers showed them how it should be done, adopting an aggressive approach that mixed bouncers with hit-the-deck-hard seam back of a good length. Wahab has done that before most notably against Shane Watson at the last World Cup. It provided a thrilling interlude but that side of him has been subdued in this series and it may need some hard words from Misbah to resurrect it.
Given that six of the top seven Pakistan batsmen are right-handers, playing three left-arm quicks is a huge gamble given the rough they create outside off-stump. It is only because they do not rate Moeen Ali that they play the trio, and you could not see them all getting a game if England still had Graeme Swann.
The pitch at Edgbaston, where next week’s third Test is held, has proved testing for batsman of late with sideways movement and extra bounce. Whether Pakistan will make changes is uncertain. The series lies at one-all and Misbah, if anything, is not one to panic. But if they do, their only real option would be to play one of the right-armers, Imran or Sohail Khan, in place of Rahat Ali or Wahab Riaz.
It would break up the lefties, but Imran’s last Test was against England when he took four wickets in an attack that contained two spinners. Which could turn Pakistan’s current game against Worcestershire a Test trial in all but name.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday July 29 2016
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