At Manchester, July 27, 28, 29. England won by an innings and 120 runs. Toss: Pakistan.
Fifty years to the week after Jim Laker took 19 Australian wickets at Old Trafford,
England produced their most effective display of the summer to go 1-0 up. There were
no stellar performances to match Laker's; there probably never will be. But that did
not dilute a feeling of well-being as two young batsmen, Cook and Bell, recorded hundreds for the second Test in a row, while Harmison, rhythm and confidence restored,
claimed match figures of 11 for 76. And, fittingly, spin played a part: Panesar took
eight wickets, to fan the Monty Mania that had begun to reach the nation's sports
desks.
Strauss had left Lord's expecting to return to the ranks, with Flintoff resuming the
captaincy. When Flintoff finally faced the reality of further surgery on his left ankle,
however, the tenure of the "stand-in for the stand-in", as Strauss modestly described
himself, was extended to the end of the series. Certainty appeared to embolden Strauss.
In a strong pre-Test address, he called on what was now his side to force home
advantages, and urged those who had become regulars since the Ashes to contribute
match-winning performances instead of simply chipping in.
Nobody responded better than Panesar, who confirmed his growing reputation as the
most exciting young English spinner for a generation. He bowled with control and
aggression, gave the ball a genuine rip when he wanted, and cast aside suggestions
that Jamie Dalrymple's all-round solidity might have been preferred to his specialised
talent. A year earlier, Ashley Giles went wicketless here on the final day of the Ashes
Test, when England badly needed penetration. Panesar, still in theory his locum, gave
them exactly that.
Little went right for Pakistan after Inzamam-ul-Haq won the toss. Coach Bob
Woolmer revealed he had spent £91.65 on a granite slab topped with marble which
he placed on a net pitch to generate steepling bounce. But however well his batsmen coped in practice, they showed little appetite when groundsman Peter Marron produced
something similar for the real contest. Harmison said he had waited all year for a pitch
like it. Early variations in bounce made batting even more awkward, but could not
excuse a meagre first innings which was done and dusted inside three hours. The loss
of Pakistan's last eight wickets for 29 recalled some of England's own travails against
Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram a decade earlier.
Harmison removed Imran Farhat in his second over and Kamran Akmal - the
wicketkeeper unwisely promoted to shore up the top of the order - in his third.
Mohammad Yousuf overcame a brilliant first over from Mahmood, recalled on his
home ground in place of the injured Plunkett, and added 81 with Younis Khan, himself
back from injury. Just when it seemed they had weathered the storm, both of them
fell in the two overs before lunch. In perfect symmetry, two more batsmen fell straight
after the break.
Nothing better crystallised events than the demise of Inzamam, caught at gully off
the splice after Harmison did him for pace. These were very different conditions from
Faisalabad or Multan, and that kind of rushed stroke, ending Inzamam's sequence of
nine half-centuries against England, cannot have helped the lower order's nerves. Strauss
was left with an easy test of captaincy; he simply persisted with Harmison and Panesar
in tandem. They finished up sharing 19 wickets between them, a feat achieved only
once for England since Laker's day: by Phil Tufnell and Andrew Caddick in the 1997
Ashes win at The Oval.
Harmison claimed most of his wickets with full-length balls, but the threat of his
well-directed bouncer made batsmen reluctant to come forward. Whether defending
like Abdul Razzaq or counter-attacking like Shahid Afridi, they did not last long.
Figures of six for 19 were Harmison's best since his seven for 12 in Jamaica in 2003-
04, which helped to propel him - briefly - to No. 1 in the Test rankings.
Pakistan lacked a tall bowler to capitalise in the same way. Trescothick raised their
hopes by edging behind and Strauss, England's only other loss on the first day, was
distracted by light reflecting off a glass door in the hospitality boxes at the Stretford
End. Expectation grew, again, when Pietersen succumbed to the third ball of the Friday,
but it typified Pakistan's misfortune that Farhat should hurt a finger in taking the sharp
catch at gully. Cook, with a mature ability to focus on the next ball rather than dwell
on the last, became the first England player since Botham to score a third hundred in
his first seven Tests, and Collingwood chiselled away in his familiar workmanlike fashion.
For sheer fluency, neither matched the free-flowing Bell, who looked a strokemaker of
the highest order as he completed his fourth Test hundred in 127 balls.
A first-innings lead of 342 was enough to absorb most setbacks, but England were
still entitled to feel uneasy when Harmison pulled up with a side strain at the end of
the second day. He responded to overnight treatment, however, and they duly wrapped
up proceedings. Pakistan made them work slightly harder this time: eight players, rather
than three, reached double figures. But, although the pitch had not really deteriorated,
they were simply too far adrift to recover. After Harmison bounced out Akmal, Panesar
claimed the next five, including Yousuf, stumped off the first ball after lunch. He
managed to turn the ball off the pitch as well as out of the rough and never felt moved
to "buy" a wicket. Younis proved his fitness with Pakistan's only half-century of the
match, but Inzamam's disappointment was complete when a ball from Panesar ricocheted
via his boot to silly point. It fell to Harmison to scythe through the tail.
A ruthless display was completed on the third evening when Jones, unencumbered
by a fracture to the tip of his right ring finger, held a skier from Razzaq, his fifth
dismissal of the innings. Despite waning confidence with the bat, Jones had kept wicket
almost flawlessly. But it was hard to credit, as his advocates now suggested, that he
might cling on to his place because of superior glovework.
Man of the Match: S. J. Harmison.