Just when you thought England’s cricketers couldn’t deliver any more surprises with ‘Bazball’, it serves up a match-winning five-wicket haul by an 18-year old wrist-spinner, Rehan Ahmed. And get this – it all happened, like this team’s continued winning habit, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Except that it shouldn’t have been. Test cricket is meant to be tough, doubly so on the comatose pitches of Pakistan. Added to that, Rehan was playing just his fourth first-class match. That is a bit like finishing your ‘A’ levels one week and becoming chairman of ICI the next.
There were nerves from him, inevitably, but only in the first innings, where he took two wickets amid a patchy performance. After that, his pitch map looked as if it had been compiled by a veteran, there being so few bad balls compared to good. Get that golden ratio right and wickets will come, especially when you can spin the ball both ways as he does.
Rehan was helped in his teenager’s quest by the upbeat, attacking mood present in England’s dressing-room, a vibe created by Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum after the pair were appointed captain and coach of the Test side last May.
Their diktats have been few but freed from negative thoughts and playing for one’s place, and with the only firm instructions being to have fun and ignore the draw, the whole team has prospered under them and then some. No other team in history has ever beaten Pakistan 3-0 in Pakistan.
Not that Rehan looked like he needed boosting in the confidence department. Whether on the field or off, he seems to have more fizz than the Duracell Bunny. In bowling terms he has only just learned to walk, albeit with a swagger, so to become the youngest bowler in Test history to take a five-wicket haul is astounding.
But beware the Raducanu effect. It becomes a whole lot tougher to deliver when expectations are raised and England are said already to be making plans to manage his development.
After seeing the batting vision of ‘Bazball’ conquer all last summer, many of us wondered if there was an equivalent bowling version, especially on placid Asian pitches. After all, Nasser Hussain’s perennial lament when England captain, on the back of his English-style bowlers struggling to take wickets abroad, was give me a 90mph reverse-swinger and a mystery spinner.
Well, Stokes has both in Mark Wood and Rehan, though his bold and imaginative captaincy has been crucial in helping them and the others to work their magic.
England’s skipper has been extraordinary in plotting the 60 Pakistan wickets his bowlers took on lifeless pitches over the three Tests. Stokes does not appear the cajoling type though you’d definitely listen if he was. Instead, he seems to charm bowlers into adopting his plans, however crazy, a ruse which becomes self-reinforcing each time that it works.
Until this tour James Anderson would never have contemplated being the enforcer, bowling bumpers with a leg-slip, nor I warrant would Ollie Robinson. But Stokes had them both at it, with match-turning success, which in turn helps his next madcap scheme seem that bit saner.
England’s bowlers were helped by their batsmen injecting time into the game with their blistering scoring-rates. Most contributed in that regard, with extraordinary chutzpah and innovation, though Harry Brook hogged the limelight with a hundred in each Test, a 468-run bonanza that won him the player of the series award.
Interestingly, given the ideal seems to be to target two boundaries an over as they do in T20, Brook’s scoring rates became slower as the series went on. But then England’s needs, for closing out their opponents, became greater. It is a good sign as it suggests he has a ruthless streak, his beady eye focused on crushing an opponent and not just the next big shot.
Given he was a replacement for Jonny Bairstow, England’s batsman of the summer, and someone who missed out here after breaking his leg playing golf, Brook has epitomised the transformation undergone by England from a side where the dilemma has shifted from who to pick to who to leave out.
But which one of Brook, Bairstow and Joe Root would you leave out, assuming Bairstow does not reclaim the wicket-keeping gloves next year? Bet the answer won’t be on a postcard from Scarborough.
No matter who has played for England these past six months, and they have picked horses for courses especially among the bowlers, the results have been broadly the same, with nine wins from ten Tests. Usually success on that scale is finely planned but this seems opportunistic and wholly improvisational, with many ploys seemingly made on the hoof.
But if that is the impression (and it is not a criticism), the overarching accomplishment of ‘Bazball,’ at least where the players are concerned, is that it has become a great unifying force for team while liberating the individual – a combination which has brought incredible success, watchable cricket and a side to be proud of.
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MORE : Rehan Ahmed makes history by becoming the youngest man to take five Test wickets in an innings
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