Pakistan v England First Test Report Card, Day Four
Featuring Cookie Monster v Scrooge McDuck redux and cover-ups
Cookie Monster v Scrooge McDuck Redux
Grade: B+
Joe Root and Harry Brook continued to bathe in runs, before England suddenly collapsed in the sweaty 790s and were forced to declare on 7/823.
Pakistan then showed them what collapsing was all about.
Cover-Ups
Grade: D
It began with the very first ball, Abdullah Shafique doing his best Ollie Pope impersonation by being bowled by Chris Woakes for a duck.
It wasn’t just Shafique, however, who was emulating the England skipper’s batting. It was every Pakistan batter. An entire team of Ollie Popes marching to the crease and back again. What’s the collective noun for popes? A cover-up? That’s what we got from Pakistan.
Earlier in the Test, when Pakistan were smashing the England bowlers everywhere, I jokingly suggested that I would laugh and laugh and laugh when England won this Test in the dying minutes of the final day.
Turns out, I meant the fourth day instead, as Pakistan collapsed to 6/82 in the final session.
However, an unbroken seventy-run partnership dragged this Test into the final day and doomed my re-prophesied fourth-day laughter. This is now very serious business. I will now only be laughing at the end of this Test if Pakistan somehow escape with a draw.
(Or, as it turns out, laughing no matter what happens. Because instead of watching the final day, I’ll be attending a They Might Be Giants concert and that always makes me happy.)