Ball One: Wood and Archer bow out early after 90mph start
Newton’s Third Law of Motion can be a bit of a bastard for a speedster up top in white ball cricket. Come up against a classy timer of a cricket ball and it will ping off the bat even quicker than it goes on to it.
In Mark Wood and Jofra Archer, England have two of the fastest men in cricket, but, if they aren’t taking wickets, there’s not much bat required to pierce the circle and, even on a damp outfield, it’s four.
Of course, in powerplay cricket, every bowler goes for runs and there’s a case for bowling the fast men with the hard ball against two batters yet to get their eyes in. But without the wickets, the game can get away from the fielding side without too much risk from the batters.
Recognising it, Jos Buttler introduced Moeen Ali for the fifth over and though the runs continued to come, the batters were obliged to work much harder.
Ball Two: England find success with variety
It was craft rather than brute force that brought England the breakthroughs they needed.
Jofra’s slower ball induced a steer from a rampant Babar Azam that Adil Rashid pouched gratefully at widish short Third Man and Rashid himself then beat Mohammad Rizwan with a beautifully pitched top-spinner that did him in the flight.
Buttler continued to rotate through his three spin options, but one couldn’t help but think that Tom Hartley’s left arm would be a handier option than more right arm from Liam Livingstone.
The margins are thin at this level. Wood unleashed against Azam Khan looked like a mismatch, a ruthlessly directed bouncer making the inexperienced keeper-batter look like a schoolboy trying to evade the school bully. This attack gives Buttler plenty of options, so often a key to success in white ball cricket.
Ball Three: Pakistan pack it in with a run out in the 20th over
At the halfway mark, Pakistan have posted 157 all out with only Babar Azam and Usman Khan making it past 25. Though they were up against a seasoned England attack, Pakistan’s batting looked short of technique against both the flighted slow ball and the short pitched fast ball. There’s some work to do in order to be competitive with bat in hand in the Caribbean.
England’s bowling wasn’t quite at its best – too short and too wide too often – but there’s nous through the whole attack and the fielding, especially in the deep, is reliable and athletic. If bowling wins matches or, perhaps more accurately, wins more matches than batting does, England’s ageing choices look like they have one last dance in them.
Ball Four: Salt peppers the crowd
Mohammad Amir, 32 now and that beautiful action he had as a teenager reduced to little more than a swing of the shoulders and a fast left arm, bowled a respectable delivery that Phil Salt simply jabbed into the crowd at deep midwicket.
I wondered whether I saw such shots in my first 20 years of watching cricket and decided that I did. Not at this level though. You would see them in club cricket from a muscle-bound, overweight number seven or eight coming in during the last hour with 45 still to get. Batsmen wouldn’t play such shots; blacksmiths would.
Which only goes to show that it’s as much a matter of attitude as it is of skill. England have been free of the fear of failure in all formats for a few years now and the results are there for all to see. Inconsistency and sometimes foolish play can blight performances, but thrilling cricket that wins more often than it loses is guaranteed. There’s no going back now.
Ball Five: To biff or not to biff – that is the question
And he who lives by the sword… Salt essays another short-arm jab to the second ball after the powerplay and is held at cow corner, the ball never rising above head height.
A dumb dismissal of a batter in full flight, or 45 runs off 25 deliveries, exactly what he was selected to do? Surely it’s the latter, but the view is not universal and, should England collapse and lose it from here, you can be sure it won’t be the guys making single figures who will be blamed, but the one who made more than any opposition batter.
Ball Six: England cruise towards the Caribbean
Hard to credit, I know, but Cricinfo’s Win Probability chart had Pakistan over 50% for most of their innings. It certainly did not look like that at the ground, a poor and somewhat shoddy visiting XI outclassed and only saved from a real walloping by Haris Rauf’s wholehearted bowling.
A very decent crowd saw some good hitting and some fiery bowling with a masterclass from Adil Rashid for the purists. It wasn’t much of a contest though, but the spirit was good, the fans enthusiastic and the rain stayed away. For a pre-World Cup match, especially in this dire Spring, that’s about as much as one can ask for.
99.94 
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