Chris Woakes struck twice in quick succession on his Warwickshire home ground as Pakistan’s dramatic middle-order collapse saw England winning the third Test at Edgbaston on Sunday.
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India: A draw in Kingston means that India have to win their remaining two Tests against West Indies to take the No. 1 spot.
Australia now look down from the summit, but they will be knocked off their perch after a humbling defeat in Sri Lanka.
But even if England receive the ceremonial mace, Cook believes there is plenty of room for improvement.
“The period me and Cooky batted at the end of day three was pivotal in setting the game up and if we’d lost one or two wickets that session, they (Pakistan) would have gone into the fourth day with their tails up”. “But it will be a bit of an irrelevance, because this side has still got much further to go”. I need that edge because I think it’s made me the bowler I am but at the same time I want to stay the right side of the line’.
“I said to the boys, we were probably one wicket away there from breaking through”, said Arthur.
Of more interest to the captain is that his team showed him a new toughness to prevail by 141 runs in the third Investec Test, despite appearing washed up after the first two days. I thought there were signs at Edgbaston that the less inexperienced guys were starting to show maturity.
Root had to do much of the hard work, alongside James Vince (42), but it was Bairstow and Moeen who upped the ante in an unbroken stand of 132 in just 27.3 overs to put England in control. We had spoken about it and that’s how it panned out. “That anything is possible”.
And he believes spin-friendly conditions at The Kia Oval would be the ideal place to play two spinners for the first time since Simon Kerrigan debuted alongside Graeme Swann in an Ashes dead rubber three years ago.
It was the second time in a year Anderson has been ruled out of the attack for running on the pitch and he will be working on the problem with bowling coach Ottis Gibson.
“Then the way Jonny and Moeen played tonight was fantastic”.
It was tough on left-arm paceman Rahat, who bowled superbly in reeling off five straight maidens in a spell of seven overs for just seven runs.
Bayliss said: “The difference in that spell was his discipline of length”.
Youngsters Mason Crane and Matt Parkinson, and Somerset’s left-armer Jack Leach have all bowled at England batsmen recently while Zafar Ansari, Stephen Parry, Liam Dawson and Danny Briggs all have a chance of a winter call-up.
England fell 1-0 behind in the series against Pakistan when they capitulated to the leg-spin of Yasir Shah at Lord’s. But later Sunday an England spokesman said there was no fracture or break in the finger, merely slight bruising, with Vince free to join the squad at The Oval.
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Bayliss added: “We will look as bringing in another batsman as cover but if we have to make a change, we will look at it when it comes up”.
