Jonny Bairstow proved again that he is a brilliant deputy for England with another man-of-the-match performance in their four-wicket win over Pakistan on his home ground.
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Pakistan skipper Azhar Ali (80 from 104) had yet another solid outing with the bat, but it was Imad Wasim’s robust late hitting (57 off 41 balls) that gave the visitors a fighting total under lights.
The giant 7ft 1in (2.1 metres) Irfan, who was himself only called into the squad as an injury replacement for Mohammad Hafeez on August 27, managed just five legitimate overs in Thursday’s fourth one-day global against England at Headingley before going off with cramps to the visible annoyance of coach Mickey Arthur.
Azhar Ali said that the series against England was hard.
By contrast they are a lowly ninth in the ODI table, with the 1992 champions in danger of failing to qualify automatically for the 2019 World Cup in England.
But soon after, Pakistan were celebrating after taking the prized wicket of Root, out for 30 following a top-edge attempting to pull, with Irfan taking the catch at deep fine leg to leave England at 59-3. We always try and flawless our fielding or get close to ideal and we want to become number one in the world.
Pakistan have a tough schedule as they try to improve their ranking, with the ICC system also factoring into account the quality of a team’s opposition.
The conditions in England have also been unpredictable and one may see more of that in the remaining two games. We have got two series against West Indies that we have to play well in – West Indies are a decent one-day outfit.
England captain Eoin Morgan has no regrets about team selection despite the hosts losing the final one-day global against Pakistan by four wickets in Cardiff.
“There were checks and balances in place [about Irfan’s fitness]”. We had a chance to win that game (at Headingley) the other day.
“When I saw the fixture list, the games aren’t easy”, Arthur said.
Stokes’s innings ended one run short of his ODI best when he tried to heave an Imad delivery over the boundary allowing Babar Azam to take a simple catch on the rope with England on 175. The duo put on 103 runs for the fifth wicket with Stokes scoring 69 runs while Bairstow scored 61 runs to pick up the player of the match award.
Watched on by a noisy sell-out crowd of 15,823, the hosts – in the face of a far more animated and vigorous Pakistan team who mercifully showed no ill effects from their world record mauling in Nottingham – maintained their hopes of a series whitewash. “England are a phenomenal cricket team, power-hitters all the way down”, he said.
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Bairstow, the son of late former Yorkshire and England wicket-keeper David Bairstow, looked considerably younger than his 26 years on Thursday, having shaved off his beard after receiving a message from his mother, Janet, a Headingley administrator.
