England captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum have been credited with trying to change the face of Test cricket thanks to their aggressive approach to the red-ball game which has brought back the excitement in the format.
The approach aimed to go for a win no matter dubbed as ‘Bazball’ proved to be extremely effective as they managed to win the first Test against Pakistan in Rawalpindi where they are touring for the first time since 2005.
England created a never-before-made record of scoring more than 500 runs on the first day of a Test match. This helped them eke out a win despite Pakistan scoring 579 to their 657 runs in first innings. England declared their second innings on 264/7 on day four and set Pakistan 343 runs to win in just over a day’s play.
However, Pakistan couldn’t stand up to the task of chasing down at just over 3.5 runs per over and folded for 268 as England won their first Test in Pakistan for 17 years by 74 runs.
Coupled with the early sunsets, time lost from both ends of the day will make raging against the draw much trickier in Multan. Stokes is fundamentally a realist with grand ambitions, knows a draw is coming for his CV, and it may be on the horizon given the various elements at play.
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However, Stokes has toyed with an idea that has only been tried once before, declaring an innings of a Test without batting, in order to avoid a draw.
"There's obviously going to be some point along this road where it's virtually impossible to get a result. If it rains for four days, good luck trying to get a result out of a Test match over one day, or two days, but if you get a good amount of time out of a Test match, I'll always be trying to plan, and talk to Baz about ways in which we can try and force a result, either way.
Especially in England with the weather that's around, you might see something even more out-there, even more than you've seen here. I might declare without batting one day, who knows? We might see that, actually, in this Test, if it does pan out the way that it could, potentially with the late start and early finish. We could end up having only 300-350 overs in the Test match.
We might have to get even a bit more adventurous with what we do. We'll see,” Stokes was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo.
Interestingly last time this happened was when England faced off against South Africa in the 5th Test of a series in Centurion in January 2000.
South Africa captain Hansie Cronje declared their first innings at 248/8, while England captain Nasser Hussain declared their innings without batting. South Africa did the same in their second innings, forfeiting their chance to bat and England was set 249 runs to win the Test.
England managed to do so thanks to 73 from Alec Stewart and 69 from Michael Vaughan and won by 2 wickets.
