London-At the age of 38, and in the final Test of a tour in which most sage judges feared that his imperious talents were beginning to fade, Younis Khan rolled back the years in stunning fashion on the third afternoon at the Kia Oval, crushing England’s hopes of a slender first-innings deficit with a brilliant 218.
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Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali tried to fix the damage with a 65-run partnership but once leg-spinner Yasir Shah dismissed England’s first innings centurion Ali for 32, the writing was on the wall for England.
Younis perfectly shielded Riaz and stretched Pakistan’s lead to 106 runs before offspinner Moeen Ali (2-128) had Riaz stumped – two balls after Cook had dropped England’s fourth catch of the innings.
Barring the infamous forfeiture in 2006, Pakistan have not lost a Test match at The Oval since 1967 (when England beat them by eight wickets).
Earlier, England were bowled out for a total of 253 runs in the 2nd innings setting Pakistan a target of 40 runs.
Alastair Cook has admitted that England lack the consistency to be rated the No.1 Test side.
We deserve to be No 1, says Misbah was posted in Sports of TheNews International – https://www.thenews.com.pk on August 15, 2016 and was last updated on August 15, 2016. “We’ve been in these situations before so we will come out tomorrow (Sunday) and fight for this Test”.
England’s tailenders did well to wipe out the deficit and avoid the innings defeat before Shah had Stuart Broad (5) caught by Younis at leg slip off a mistimed reverse sweep.
There was an aggravating factor for Hales here, after he marched up to the third umpire’s room to confront the match official about being given out to a controversial low catch in the first innings.
Saturday saw him fall lbw for 12 to Shah’s sixth ball of the day, with England wasting a review in the process. Yasir Shah was the star-performer for Pakistan as he picked up five wickets whereas Wahab Riaz clinched two wickets.
Vince’s 158 runs at 22.57 this series left his Test future open to question.
Opening batsman Cook and number three Joe Root continued to rack up the runs, but the rest of England’s specialist batsmen struggled against Pakistan.
Asad Shafiq, too, struck impressive century after he was promoted up the order.
Between those pair and a couple of useful contributions for the tail they batted well into Day 3 after finishing Day 2 just a handful of runs down and were eventually knocked over for 542 closing in on Tea.
But Pakistan did not have long to wait for his wicket when Ali went back defensively to Shah and got a thin edge which Ahmed held at the second attempt to end a stand of 65 and leave England 193 for six.
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Amir took 24 balls to get off the mark but did so in dashing fashion when he hoisted Ali for six over deep midwicket.
