England rearguard defies Inzamam

It was nothing like the summer. Instead of fizzing, sparkling and exploding through its acts and scenes, it built slowly – smouldering throughout its controversial opening days amidst the stabs of intrigue. Ian Bell’s catch that wasn’t, Inzamam’s run out, Bell and Pietersen’s centuries, Danish Kaneria’s miserable third morning and Salman Butt’s leg-before – not forgetting Shahid Afridi’s two-step on the danger area after the gas cylinder exploded…

The final act began with four Pakistani tail-end wickets intact, and inside the first scene it was three as Rana Naved-ul-Hasan slashed with static feet at Steve Harmison’s full, wide away-swinger to present Geraint Jones with his ninth catch of the series and eightieth in Tests. With Shoaib Akhtar batting at nine, the door was ajar – but the fast bowler had no intention of allowing England to open it.

As his captain, Inzamam, allowed him to dominate the strike, England’s seamers could only find the middle of his dead bat – and on the occasion they didn’t, the deflections would not carry to the slip cordon. One-ninety, two-hundred… Pakistan eked out run upon run as Shoaib’s mask of obduracy – occasionally loosened by a more characteristic swish or two – continued to frustrate the tourists.

Yet suddenly, as the game threatened to stagnate through its own lethargy, Inzamam casually strolled down the wicket and deposited Steve Harmison several rows back over the long-on ropes. Did Pakistan really want to win this? Was Inzamam even going to declare?

Either way, the eighth-wicket liaison soon stretched to the hour mark and with it the lead towards 250. The new ball seemed England’s last hope of a breakthrough early enough to set up a realistic run-chase – but Matthew Hoggard stuck with the older version and finally enticed a mistake from Shoaib, who edged behind for a sixty-ball fourteen. Nonetheless, Mohammad Sami showed no sign of batting in any way other than lockdown as the clock wore onwards and both sides’ urgency dissipated into the Faisalabad morning.

A rare rush of blood from Inzamam saw him offer a skier to Andrew Strauss on the deep mid-wicket boundary, only for the England batsman to apply the finishing touches to his contribution to this series’ back catalogue of amateur spills. Hoggard finally ended Mohammad Sami’s thirty-three-ball resistance, nipping the ball back and striking him in front of off stump. Inzamam soldiered onwards against the English bowlers and a developing knee problem, finally turning down singles and keeping the strike to protect Danish Kaneria as England sat back on the boundary.

The attentions of the crowd then turned to whether their captain could become the fifth Pakistani – after the greats Hanif Mohammad and Javed Miandad, and the less illustrious Wajahatullah Wasti and Yasir Hameed – to score a century in each innings of a Test match. As England persisted with boundary riders, it became simple for him to control the strike and pick off the four-balls – finally squeezing Andrew Flintoff to third man and recording his landmark twenty-fourth century to surpass Miandad as the leading Test century-maker for his country. Come the hundred, come the declaration – a nominal target of 285 in 64 overs (or around four hours) to square the series, or survival to keep it alive.

A one-over session before lunch has never been anything but awkward to work through, and a disastrous error of judgement from Marcus Trescothick inside the first four balls didn’t aid the English cause. Inexplicably leaving an inswinger from Shoaib, the ball slammed into the off and middle stumps to initiate lunchtime jitters in the English dressing room. The new ball was doing for Pakistan what England never gave it the chance to – would it prove to haunt England?

Awkward swiftly became near-catastrophic in the first over after the interval as Andrew Strauss failed to get properly forward to Rana Naved and chopped a bottom edge onto his wicket. Minutes later, Michael Vaughan was fortunate to survive an LBW shout as Shoaib pinned a full-length ball into his boot – only the uncertainty of whether there was bat involved saving the England captain as both quick bowlers swung the ball dramatically away from the right-handers.

It wasn’t swing but bounce that accounted for the next wicket to fall, Ian Bell needlessly aiming a flash at a short and wide delivery outside the off stump – making a top edge’s worth of contact with both feet above the ground and giving Kamran Akmal an easy task behind the wicket. Soon after, Simon Taufel’s assignment in raising his right index finger was just as regulation when Michael Vaughan became the latest English batsman to be trapped on the crease and was struck on the pad by Rana. Granted, the ball was keeping a little low at times, but the tourists’ footwork was fast becoming tentative to the point of negligence.

Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff is not the batting combination that any England fan would pick to charge with the task of saving their country from twenty for four, but they at least began confidently and with decisive footwork, the shine of the new ball wearing off and the intensity of the Pakistani pressure easing – prompting Inzamam to turn to Danish Kaneria’s leg spin in the midst of a crowd of vultures hovering around the bat.

Pakistan turned soon after to spin from both ends, Danish Kaneria operating around the wicket from Darrell Hair’s end in partnership with Shahid Afridi, but neither leg-spinner was able to extract any significant movement from the still docile track. The subsequent re-introduction of Shoaib was greeted by a brace of fours from Flintoff, square driven and guided through gully, to take the fifth-wicket union past fifty.

Any complacent thoughts creeping into English minds were then shaken by a trademark Kevin Pietersen slog-sweep that missed the ball by a considerably larger margin than ended up between the ball and the off-stump. Four overs later, Flintoff demonstrated the correct way to play said shot – seeking out the advertising boards beyond the midwicket ropes – but both sides showed little desire to force the pace and advance the game. England’s Alistair Cook brought out frequent refreshment for the batsmen, whilst Inzamam engaged in leisurely conversation with his bowlers and fielders.

Unfortunately for England, the detente wasn’t to last. Pietersen played forward – but his weight was back – and an inside edge ballooned off his front pad skywards towards short midwicket, where the substitute fielder Asim Kamal scampered and tumbled forward to snatch the ball inches from the turf. Suddenly, the demons in the pitch were alive once again. Geraint Jones chipped Shahid Afridi fractionally short of his diving follow-through and Andrew Flintoff’s inside edge onto pad looped only metres short of Younis Khan at a floating fourth slip, but England survived until tea with five wickets still intact and every chance of saving the game.

Flintoff brought up his half century as he struck three consecutive fours from Shoaib’s first over after the resumption – two exquisitely timed drives, the first through extra cover and the second square, and one clip to fine leg when the bowler strayed onto his pads – before further frustrating the bowler by stepping away as Shoaib near the end of his mammoth run. Shoaib extracted a kind of revenge from the last delivery of the over as he struck England’s all-rounder on the right thumb, necessitating treatment from the England physio.

Shahid Afridi’s full repertoire of variations – leg breaks, quicker balls and off spinners – was proving miserly in its economy from the Golf Course end, whilst at the Pavilion end Shoaib mixed reverse swing with round-the-wicket short balls, fighting to make the crucial breakthrough. Flintoff fended a bouncer away from his helmet past short leg with his bat handle, whilst Jones squirted an outside edge to the third man boundary.

It seemed that England were on the home straight, but another chicane loomed ahead. Shoaib dug in another short ball, the ball died off the wicket, Flintoff instinctively hooked – too early – and the ball arced to another substitute, Hasan Raza at gully, who completed a simple catch. Six wickets down, with possibly forty minutes to play and the tail exposed, Younis Khan called for a phalanx of close catchers to both Shoaib and Afridi – six men circled the batsman for the quick bowler, whilst the spinner saw four cluster on the off-side.

Geraint Jones wore another Shoaib short ball on the left upper arm, but responded well as he drove a slower ball back past the bowler to the long-off boundary and squeezed out a yorker to the cover point ropes – before taking another short ball on the chest. Ashley Giles escaped a strong LBW shout from Danish Kaneria – umpire Taufel giving the benefit of the doubt as to the line of impact – as the clock wore down towards safety.

Jones and Giles continued to hold firm as Inzamam turned to Mohammad Sami, despite Kaneria’s increasingly frenzied appeals to anything that either hit the pad or came within six inches of the outside edge as the spinner finished wicketless for the first time in his Test career, and come 16.34 local time, England has saved the Test match to preserve their chances of squaring the series.

The teams move on to the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore for the third and final Test in the series on Tuesday. With Afridi banned following his day two antics and Abdul Razzaq unlikely to be fit, Pakistan seem likely to opt for Asim Kamal rather than Hasan Raza to fill the number six position. England, meanwhile, have a choice between the uncapped Alistair Cook and Paul Collingwood to replace the homebound Andrew Strauss – whose mind has seemed like it may have been on the upcoming birth of his child, rather than the cricket during this series so far. The tourists may also wish to jettison one of their ineffective spin options, with Shaun Udal the most likely to make way for either James Anderson or Liam Plunkett.

Pakistan 462
Inzamam-ul-Haq 109, Shahid Afridi 92
Steve Harmison 3-85, Ashley Giles 2-85

England 446
Ian Bell 115, Kevin Pietersen 100
Shahid Afridi 4-95, Naved-ul-Hasan 2-63

Pakistan 268-9 dec
Inzamam-ul-Haq 100*, Salman Butt 50
Matthew Hoggard 3-50, Andrew Flintoff 3-66

England 164-6
Andrew Flintoff 56, Kevin Pietersen 42
Naved-ul-Hasan 3-30, Shoaib Akhtar 3-61

Match Drawn

Cricket Web Player of the Match
Inzamam-ul-Haq (Pakistan) – 109 and 100*