And there was still time in the two overs before stumps for Stuart Broad to have Sami Aslam lbw for three.
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England is now leading the series by a 2-1 margin, after having won the third Test in Edgbaston by 141 runs.
He shared in partnerships of 93 in 25 overs with Jonny Bairstow (55) and 79 in 14 overs with Chris Woakes (45) to take England past the 300 mark. Sohail ended with 5 for 68, his second five-wicket innings haul in as many Tests.
Pakistan’s fielders will rue two missed catches from the bat of Ali – when he was on just 9 and 15 runs.
Moeen needed the No11, Jimmy Anderson, to hang around long enough to see him complete his third Test hundred – and one that takes his average to 97.16 batting at No7 – bringing up the milestone by depositing Yasir into the Peter May stand with an almighty hit.
“It’s the second time I’ve been hit here first ball – Mitchell Johnson did it to me a year ago – but I stayed calm”, Ali told Sky Sports News.
And his duel with Shane Watson during last year’s ODI World Cup quarter-final against Australia lit up the tournament, but again there he finished with just the two scalps as Michael Clarke’s men prevailed in that encounter and went on to lift the trophy. That is when I made a decision to bat properly again, and I have worked on my defence with batting coach Mark Ramprakash. “I’ve stayed calm, and I wasn’t fazed by it all”.
The Pakistan One-Day International skipper had dropped Bairstow earlier in the session. “We’d take 320. It’s going well and when I’ve got good players to bat around, and the tail also all did their job, it makes it easy for me”. Ali once again demonstrated his pedigree as the all-rounder hit a match-saving 108 – his third Test hundred – to rescue his side from a top-order collapse. He finally fell in the 77th over holing out to Yasir Shah at deep square leg to give Sohail his second five-wicket haul in this series.
Talking about these failures in the field, Pakistan’s bowling coach Mushtaq Ahmed said that dropping catches are not the trademark of a good team.
Alastair Cook and Joe Root managed to take the score to 69-1 before the captain played on to his own stumps from a Sohail Khan delivery, departing for 35.
Coming in at 110 for five, staying until England’s score was nearly tripled, and scoring so quickly there was still time to take Pakistan’s first wicket, England’s left-hander was as rollicking as if he had been David Gower after a night on the tiles. West Indies’ sixth wicket made 1223 runs in 1984 at an average of 67.94 with five century stands and four fifty stands.
There was swing available with the new ball, on a surface of decent pace, but Hales’ dismissal was a curiosity which owed nothing to either of those factors and left the vexed batsman far from convinced.
But Pakistan, whose close catching has proved fallible this series, then saw Azhar twice drop Ali on nine and 15. Azhar – now at short-leg – was the unable to hold a far harder catch following Moeen’s powerful whip off Yasir.
Pakistan’s Wahab Riaz bowls during Fouth Test cricket match against England at the Oval, on Thursday, August 11, 2016.
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After lunch, it was confirmed that Pakistan’s Hanif Mohammad, one of cricket’s greatest batsmen, had died aged 81 after a prolonged illness.
