Busted fingers have been a bit of a theme in this Test series.
Shan Masood started the series with a fractured finger after copping a nasty blow in the Caribbean. Apart from the many fumbles he has made in the field, it has also cost him runs. Across 50 Tests, Shan has averaged in and around 30 with the bat. It might change on Day 3 at Edgbaston, but as things stand, he has not scored 30 runs in an innings on this tour. Shan was also dropped on 13 by Ben Duckett, which means he might just complete his version of thirteen going on thirty, with Jennifer Garner nowhere to be seen.
Babar Azam missed the Headingley Test due to a finger injury as well. No broken bones, just a ball that rose sharply off the deck in Beckenham. He mentioned in a press conference prior to the Lord’s Test that he was 90 percent fit. Babar hasn’t managed to get to double digits across three innings thus far, so that last 10 percent has well and truly held him back. Perhaps he could have scored more runs than Gus Atkinson with a fully functioning finger.
Mohammad Rizwan also hurt his fingers plenty of times at Lord’s, keeping up to the stumps. He is currently looking for a shrink back in Pakistan, after being flown back prematurely.
Jamie Smith joined Pakistan’s former and current captains with what has been described as his finger being in a splint. He was deemed unfit to keep wicket, but fit enough to smash Pakistan’s bowlers for a counterattacking knock of 69. Jamie’s stiff, bruised, or potentially dislocated finger has proven to be stronger than Imam-ul-Haq’s calf.
Busted fingers may well have been a theme in this series, but only one team has truly felt the pain.
- by Behram Qazi
England’s runline was 329.5 overnight, meaning there was about a 50% chance that they’d score fewer than 330 runs in their first innings. At 156/4, with Pakistan’s random team generator machine of utter and complete nonsense fighting to salvage something - anything - from a series which has seen them lurch from chaos to omnishambles, there should’ve been a rallying cry this morning. Razaullah firing 90mph bombs from one end with Abbas’ metronomic meddling at the other. Get rid of Lawrence early, let Brook get himself out in his 55-75 danger zone, give the fans something to cheer about. At least tell the fielders that their fans had paid an average of £100 for a ticket to watch them today, and suggest they look like they were trying to stop the ball, run after it and so on. They conceded 52 in the first six overs. Fifty two. England should’ve declared there and then and they could’ve booked a teatime tee-time for their post-series pub golf.
Shakeel aside, Pakistan haven’t really fought on this tour and my word they didn’t really fight today. They did manage to get the sixth wicket they needed to bowl England out on the stroke of tea, but by then England had added 297 runs in 50 overs. 453 all out. England have only had to bat four times across the three Test Matches. England’s 8-11 have averaged 24; Pakistan’s 1-7 have averaged sixteen. Josh Tongue, the number 11 who boasted a Test batting average of FOUR POINT EIGHT SIX before Pakistan came to town, hit his eleventh four of the series this afternoon. At that point, only Saud Shakeel, from all the Pakistan players, had hit more. Than JOSH TONGUE. England’s number 10 had hit more sixes than all sixteen of the opposition players put together.
We’ve seen sides in disarray, in bad form, with off-field dramas, carrying injuries, struck down with Covid and not bothering to turn up in dead rubbers. In my 25 years of covering cricket, I can’t remember seeing a team who has tried less hard to win a Test. Being outplayed is fine. It not being the players’ fault is a completely fair argument. The board, the management, the selectors and everyone involved with this clusterfuck of a tour don’t just have blood on their hands, they look like a DMX album cover. Nevertheless, eleven men were picked to play for their country in this match, three of whom for the first time. They didn’t try hard enough. The only acceptable tactic this game has been the batters all aiming at Ben Duckett, whose catching has made Mr Magoo look like a peregrine falcon.
This was more boxed kittens than cornered tigers. The fielding went from lamentable to pathetic to deplorable. Masood’s game-within-a-game was seeing how many times he could field the ball before he picked it up cleanly. Zero intensity, hands in pockets or on hips. The players can’t wash their hands of this, no matter how impossibly poorly they’ve been managed. A reminder that before this series England weren’t a very good cricket team, having orchestrated their own drunken circus whilst throwing away their previous series against an injury-stricken New Zealand.
At 4.05pm this afternoon, they announced an ominous-sounding CODE RED in the press box. All stewards were to report immediately. At exactly that moment, Robinson took England’s second wicket. The innings had been going for 5 balls. Half of us were expecting the stewards to eject Pakistan from the ground for wasting everyone’s time. Instead, thanks to some crease occupation from Azan and Masood, we’ll be back tomorrow. They did show a bit of fight, in the same way a discombobulated fighter’s fists flail through muscle memory alone as he descends to the canvas. 3-0 it will be, and it’s a scoreline which flatters Pakistan.
- by Rob Barron
