By Syed Mahmood Sharazi
Ist Test match at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, England defeated Pakistan by 74 runs and won their first Test match on Pakistan’s soil after 22 years . Along with this, the England cricket team has also taken a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.
Chasing a target of 343 runs on the fifth day of the first Test match at the Pindi Cricket Stadium, the Pakistani team returned to the pavilion by scoring 268 runs. Ollie Robinson was awarded the man of the match award for his best bowling. James Anderson and Robinson from England. took four wickets each, Jack Leach and Ben Stokes got one each.
The England cricket team’s bold approach played an important role in making the Rawalpindi Test a productive . Because the Rawalpindi Test match seemed to be heading for a draw during the first three days. But the most important turning point in the match came when England Captain Ben Stokes decided to declare the innings on the fourth day.
Hardly any team in Test cricket could have made such a decision on such a pitch. It was a decision that breathed new life into the match despite Rawalpindi’s dead pitch.
Looking at the situation, it could be said that Pakistan has been put on the match plate by England, but here the difference between the playing style of the two teams and the strategy to win the match was clear. Pakistan was playing with the fear of losing from the beginning of the day while England cricket team appeared to play aggressively with the spirit of winning.
England scored 657 runs in their first innings after playing 101 overs while Pakistan batsmen played 155 overs to score 579 runs. That is, England scored runs at an average of 6.53, while the Pakistani batsmen, playing the traditional game, played the match at an average of only 3.72 runs per over.
In the second innings too, England adopted their bazball approach and declared their innings by scoring 264 runs in 36 overs to make the match fruitful. Pakistan got 343 runs in five sessions for the target, but the Pakistani team, playing Tests with a fifty-year-old approach, could not capitalize on the opportunity and collapsed for 268 runs on the fifth day.
A wicket on which the Pakistani fast bowlers were struggling to get a wicket, the English bowlers took nine wickets in the second innings and told the Pakistani bowlers how to bowl with line and length on a dead wicket for getting Results.
This approach of England cricket team is being named bazball approach. Baz is actually the nickname of current England head coach and former New Zealand wicketkeeper batsman Brendon McCullum. When Brendon McCullum was at his peak, his teammates and commentators called him Bazball because of his aggressive batting style.
At the beginning of the year 2022, when the England board got fed up with continuous defeats and fired coach Chris Silverwood, they thought of changing their style of play and appointed Brendon McCullum as coach to adopt an aggressive style.
Under the captaincy and coaching of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, the English team has played seven Test matches so far, in which no match has been drawn. England has won six of the last seven Test matches. The same bazball strategy has given England T20 World Cup. England also played bazball cricket in the Rawalpindi Test and scored a lot of runs.
England’s batsmen overturned many records in the world of cricket and set many new records in Rawalpindi Test. On the other hand Pakistan continued to play the Test as a traditional Test and the Englanders adopted the T20 approach to Test matches and Turned a drawn Test into victory.
It is believed that fate also favors the brave, if they want to win the Tests in Multan and Karachi, then the PCB will have to make wickets free from the fear of defeat, because England have decided that the matches will be decisive. They have to make it even if the result is not in their favor.
