Praises starts to shower from all around the cricket community for Ben Stokes’ captaincy right after England won their first Test of the Pakistan tour 2022. Notably, it was England’s first Test in Pakistan in around 17 years.
Stokes On England’s Victory Over Pakistan in 1st Test
With an hour to go before the closing of the game Bazid Khan on air said “If Stokes manages to win this, he should be named the Mayor of Rawalpindi”.
Winning the toss England opted to bat first and scored 657 runs for 10 wickets where Zak Crawley, Duckett, Ollie Pope, and Harry Brook scored centuries on the first day. James Anderson scored 6 runs in the first innings.
Pakistan ended up their inning with 579 runs where Babar Azam scored the team’s best; scored 136 runs from 168 balls for which former England captain Michael Vaughan praised him which received mixed reactions from cricket fans.
In the second inning, England scored 264 runs for 7 wickets and declared whereas Pakistan scored 268 runs after losing all their 10 wickets. With a difference of 74 runs, England won the first Test and leads the 3-match Test series which is a part of ICC WTC23.
The match gets into a huge drama towards the end where England was in need of 1 wicket to win the match while Mohammad Ali and Naseem Shah made a stand for nearly 8 overs and plans to draw the match.
Pakistan also seems to handle time-wasting statics by delaying the start of the match after the drinks break. With roughly 35 minutes maximum left for the closure of the game, Mohammad Ali has gone off to the dressing room for a restroom break which delayed the game.
At the end, Jack Leach dismissed Naseem Shah and bagged the 10th wicket of Pakistan’s second inning and led England to win the game by 74 runs.
Post the victory, England captain Ben Stokes said “Some of the things we can’t plan for is what happened to the squad before the Test. Seems a long time ago when we were running around to find players for the Test. Will Jacks getting the message three minutes before the toss, and Pope getting the gloves. We’ve played 8-9 matches with myself and Brendon in charge”.
With a total of 5 wickets in the 1st Test, James Anderson becomes the leading wicket-taker of the ICC World Test Championship 2021-23 with 55 wickets under his name followed by Ollie Robinson with 49 wickets.
“One thing we try to do is focus on ourselves and not the opposition. We know we’re a very exciting team. Was a great batting surface, so it was an opportunity for our batting group. Having the lads truck in like they did today was amazing. Really special group of players. We wanted to come here to Pakistan and carry on with our mantra of exciting cricket”.
“I’ve got no interest in trying to play for a draw, the dressing room has no interest in playing for a draw. Felt on this kind of wicket, almost had to entice the batsmen to play an attacking shot”.
“Today we were fortunate to get the ball reverse-swinging. James Anderson and Ollie Robinson were fantastic today. We won probably about 8 minutes before we would’ve come off. This is probably up there as one of England’s greatest away wins”, he added
The second Test match of the series will be played on December 09 at Multan Cricket Stadium, Multan while the last Test will be played on December 17.
