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England in Pakistan: Andy Zaltzman on an astonishing and record-breaking first Test
By Andy ZaltzmanComedian & BBC cricket statistician
The Rawalpindi Test defied precedent, expectation, and the accepted bounds of cricketing science.
On a featureless travesty of a cricket pitch that categorically refused to deteriorate - and was estimated by experts to have a half-life not far short of weapons-grade plutonium - in a match shorn of around 10 overs per day by the sun sticking to its scheduled setting time,
England concocted one of the most astonishing Test match victories.
Even allowing for the weakness of Pakistan's bowling attack - they had not fielded an XI with fewer collective career Test wickets since the mid-1950s, when they were a new addition to international cricket - this match should have been a draw.
Almost the only feasible path to victory on such a surface, in what was essentially a four-and-a-half day game, was to score something in the region of 921 runs in 136.5 overs, to allow sufficient time to take 20 wickets. England stuck to that blueprint with impressive precision, right from the start.
In the Test Match Special commentary box, my stats machine was overheating from the first over to the last. The gripping, fluctuating and unprecedented story of the game Vesuviused out a pyroclastic flow of extraordinary numbers, from the moment Zak Crawley equalled Chris Gayle's record 14 runs in the first over of a Test match.
Ben Duckett and Crawley reached 100 without loss in 13.4 overs, the second-fastest hundred first-wicket stand in Tests, and the fastest in the opening innings of a Test, and the third time England have broken their national record for fastest 100 opening partnership in the last five games. The 14.5 overs it took England to reach 100 in the second innings was also in the Top 10 Fastest 0-to-100s in Test history.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/63873273
Agreed....but punching won't do it...we need to trap him!
