With half an hour of a soggy Headingley evening still to run, Harry Brook rocked back to steer Ali Usman’s left-arm spin through a vacant mid-wicket, found only fresh air, and heard the ball clatter into his stumps. Ninety-one. At the ground where he learned the game, in front of the crowd that claims him hardest, a Test hundred was left hanging in the floodlit murk once more.
It is becoming the small, strange subplot of a very large career. Brook arrived at Headingley on Thursday as the number one ranked batter in Test cricket, and left it with his wait for an 11th Test century stretching past a year — and his wait for a first at home going on. The Guardian noted he had been dismissed a single run short against India at the same ground last summer. England, mind you, could hardly care less this evening.
A reprieve, then a masterclass in the Headingley murk
Brook should not have lasted long enough to be disappointed. Dropped on one by a Pakistan side that has spent two days spilling its chances along with its standards, he took the reprieve and turned it into 91 from 93 balls — a rate that looked faintly absurd on a day when, as BBC Sport reported, the umpire Allahuddien Paleker officiated in gloves and England’s backroom staff watched from the balcony wrapped in thick coats.
Morning rain delayed the start until 14:45 BST, and the low cloud and artificial light should have belonged to Pakistan’s seamers. Instead Brook met them square on, adding 120 with Dan Lawrence, whose recall was marked with 51. It was, as BBC Sport’s Stephan Shemilt put it from Headingley, a reminder of how important the vice-captain will be to England’s new era — the man overlooked for the Test captaincy quietly making himself indispensable to it.
England’s grip, and Pakistan’s unravelling
By stumps England were 366 for eight, a lead of 195, having lost three wickets in the closing exchanges without doing themselves any real harm. Joe Root made 66 and Jordan Cox 73 in a third-wicket stand of 150 that ended with both men short of landmarks: Cox feathered behind off Usman, and four balls later Root played across the line at Khurram Shahzad and was lbw. Usman finished with five for 92, the one Pakistan bowler to leave the field with his reputation enhanced.
That is the shape of this match. Pakistan were dismissed for 171 on a first day owned by Josh Tongue and Ollie Robinson, who took five wickets each, with Abdullah Shafique’s 61 the lone act of resistance. Two days in, England have not had to do anything especially clever — merely fewer careless things than the opposition. Victory inside three days, the BBC suggested, is no longer fanciful.
The right kind of problem for Root
For a captain in his second tenure, this is close to an ideal opening statement. Root’s reappointment came with the quiet question of how different this England would look and feel, and the answer at Headingley has been a fairly traditional one: bowl straight, bat long, and let the weather and the opposition supply the errors.
Brook’s contribution to that is worth more than the 91 in the book. England’s middle order has spent recent years being asked to rescue positions; here it was asked to press home an advantage, and it did so without fuss. The hundred will come, probably somewhere less sentimental than Leeds. Brook will insist he does not mind. Nobody on the Western Terrace will believe him.
