England beat Pakistan 3-1 in Test series
England wrapped up a 3-1 victory in their Test series with Pakistan at Lord’s with a thumping innings victory. But did anyone notice?
The writing was on the wall by the end of the third day’s play when Pakistan left the field at 41-4 and still needing to score another 331 runs to avoid an innings defeat. However, it was what had been written in a newspaper that held most of the interest for the sparse crowd that took up the places for the final act.
A story in the News of the World claimed that some of its members are implicated in a betting scam for which police have arrested a man on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud bookmakers in an act of spot-fixing, which is affecting the play to land bets on a specific passage of play rather than the overall result.
The two players whom the paper implicated, in what has all the hallmarks of a classic News of the World sting operation, were Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif. The newspaper made the claim that the two bowlers delivered three deliberate no-balls against England on Thursday and Friday – in line with the predictions of an alleged middle man in London who met undercover reporters posing as members of a gambling cartel.
There had been doubts that the match would even go ahead after members of the Pakistan team had spent much of the night being questioned by officers from the Metropolitan Police at the team’s London hotel. The police officers left with a quantity of documents and mobile phones.
However, a joint statement issued by the International Cricket Council, the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Pakistan Cricket Board said that the match would go on although as Pakistan did not arrive at Lord’s until about an hour before the scheduled start of play.
Despite the whirlwind of speculation a game of cricket just about broke out and Azhar Ali and Umar Akmal left the privacy of the away-team dressing room to a smattering of polite applause from the members’ seats. Even the England team seemed keen not to engage the batsmen in any of the sledging that is normally part and parcel of Test cricket.
But that could have been because they had a colossal advantage which they increased with four wickets within the first 50 minutes of play. Ali was the first out with the score on 63, deceived by a ball from Graeme Swann that did not turn by did hit the off stump.
Only one more run was added before Kamran Akmal became the sixth wicket, caught behind by Matt Prior off the bowling of Jimmy Anderson, which brought Mohammad Amir to the crease. The 18-year-old has been one of the success stories of the summer for Pakistan but now the teenager must have had the weight of the world on his shoulders and lasted just five balls before he was bowled by Swann for 0.
By now the Pakistan batsmen were walking to the wicket like men making their way to the gallows and 73-8 when Wahab Riaz became Swann’s fourth victim of the innings, with the catch taken by Kevin Pietersen and Saeed Ajmal brought the inevitable that step closer when he was run out by Stuart Broad.
Just about the only ignominy that Pakistan could hope to avoid was that of being dismissed twice for less than a hundred runs in a Test match at Lord’s – as happened to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 in 1958. Umar managed to navigate that humiliation when he brought up the hundred with a boundary and was determined to go out on as much of a blaze of glory as he could, farming the strike while cutting and smashing anything that came close enough to be given the treatment.
He reached his 40-ball half-century with another boundary, in an over from Swann that yielded 14 runs, and was playing some handsome shots. The 50-partership was reached, of which Mohammad Asif’s contribution was but a single run.
But the entertainment ended when Mohammad Asif got an inside edge to a ball from Swann, which deflected on to his boot and was caught by Paul Collingwood, which was confirmed by an umpire decision review, as the Pakistan innings closed on 147. That gave Swann his first five-fer at Lord’s as England won by an innings and 225 runs, which was http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755’s heaviest Test defeat.
Umar was left stranded on 79 not out, but the whole team must be feeling left out in the cold.
Broad, who along with Jonathan Trott laid the foundation for the victory with their 332-run partnership as well as taking three wickets, won the man-of-the-match award while the series awards for each team were won by Trott and Mohammad Amir.
It will be a match, and a series, that Pakistan will want to forget before the start of the one-day element of this tour.
Whether they will be allowed to do so may be another matter.
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