England carried their brutal assault on Pakistan with captain Ben Stokes charging down the track to hit pacer Naseem Shah for a six off the first ball he faced on Day 2 of the first Test in Rawalpindi. If there ever was an advert for new-age England’s style of approaching Test cricket and that was it. Yes, they were 506/4 in only 75.1 overs, and yes it was one of the flattest pitches ever possible but it was his first ball of the day for heaven’s sake. Most batters don’t do that even in T20 cricket but then again, we are talking about England, a side which scores 504 in 75 overs, becoming the first team to breach the 500-run barrier on Day 1 of a Test match.
The first over of the second day’s play was, however, as much about Ben Stokes’s audacity as Naseem Shah’s presence of mind. After being shell-shocked straight over the back of his head in the first ball, the talented Pakistan right-arm pacer came back strongly to dismiss the England captain in the same over.
Stokes had taken a single off the next ball after hitting the six but got the strike back from Harry Brook a ball later. Naseem Shah knew that Stokes would come again. He took the colour of the ball and the white clothes out of his mind and approached it like a T20. He had very little choice to be honest as the batter he was bowling to, was already in T20 mode.
Stokes backed away and tried to make room but Naseem didn’t give him any pace. His well-disguised slower ball foxed the left-hander and rattled his stumps. Stokes walked back for 41 off 18 balls even as Naseem Shah roared. Amid all the batting carnage, this was a moment of brilliance from Pakistan’s Naseem Shah.
The youngster would then go on to take two more wickets of debutant Liam Livingstone and the rampaging Harry Brook for 153. England, however, raced away past 600 in no time, scoring nearly 7 runs an over in an unimaginable way of Test-match batting. Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope were the other centurions in the England innings apart from Brook.