Zak Crawley, an amazing top-order batsman from England converted his maiden Test century into a magical innings of 267 on Saturday. From the start of the innings, England had a strong grip in its batting line-up.
England have found a very good no 3 in Crawley.. looks a class player .. hope to see him in all formats regularly @nassercricket @ECB_cricket
— Sourav Ganguly (@SGanguly99) August 22, 2020
Apart from Zak Crawley, Jos Buttler showed his class and experience and made 152. They both shared a stand of 359 that took England to a gigantic first innings score of 583-8. After that England declared on the second day of the third test. But unfortunately, Pakistan could not even stand against the swings of James Anderson. At the end of the day, Pakistan was 24-3, absolutely demolished by the swings of Anderson. Now he is the first paceman to take 600 wickets in Tests.
Regarding the summary of the match, ShanMasood was plumb lbw for only four runs. His fellow opener Abid Ali has scored only 1 run before edging Anderson low to Dom Sibley at third slip. At the end of the day, classic batsman Babar Azam too failed to save his wicket, Anderson picked him lbw for 11 with one that cut back. Anderson bowled 5.5 overs, took 3 crucial wickets conceded only 13 runs.
The current England team is very much stronger than before in each format of the game. Before this match England made 589-9 declared against the same opposition at Old Trafford four years ago. The economy of the Pakistan bowlers was not up to the mark. Three of the frontline Pakistan bowlers conceded over 100 runs each. Leg-spinner Yasir Shah conceded 173 runs taking 2 wickets from 39 overs and paceman Naseem Shah took only 1 wicket about conceding 109 runs.
Crawley’s partnership with Jos Buttler was also a new fifth-wicket record in Tests, successfully surpassed the 254 shared by Keith Fletcher and Tony Grieg against India at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai in February 1973.
Crawley’s innings was the seventh-highest maiden hundred in 143 years of Test-match cricket and the 10th highest score by any England batsman. After a long break from cricket due to COVID-19, it is undoubtedly a magical innings by Zak Crawley.
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