Gautam Gambhir had said that as a bowler you are right in saying that cricket is a batsman's game and this statement is absolutely true in T20 cricket, but Mark Wood seemed to completely disagree with it last night.
The past few months have been particularly troubling for Mark Wood. Although he was bowling the best of his career in the Ashes and later in the IPL as well, the new franchise Lucknow Supergiants hired him for around seven and a half million pounds. At the age of 32, what could be a better time for a fast bowler to have an injury-plagued early career behind him and to begin his prime with such a bang. But then, on the West Indies tour, he began to suffer from elbow pain and two weeks later, he was found to undergo surgery on that elbow.
But when Wood was expected to return for England's tour of South Africa recently, speaking to Sky Sports, he revealed that he needed surgery again. And more than his elbow, he seemed troubled by an ankle injury. It should be noted that earlier in the year 2016, he had undergone three operations on his ankle. After such a long wait and patient treatment, Mark Wood, who made his comeback at the National Stadium Karachi last night, was as dangerous as Wood was when he debuted seven years ago.
Their first over consisted of a barrage of devastating pace bowling. He was consistently bowling over 150 kmph and the slowest ball in his first spell was 140 kmph.
Pace is often the main difference on Asian batting wickets like Karachi. In the second T20I, Haris Rauf and Shahnawaz Dhani had baffled the English batsmen on the basis of pace, and in Pakistan's record chase of the target, Moeen Ali's main shortcoming was the absence of pace.Babar Azam is undoubtedly the best batsman in the world, but here Markwood outclassed him and defied his expectations. The third man fielder was on the boundary, Babar Azam was cutting the caution early in the innings and the required run rate was increasing.
In such a situation, it was certain that if Wood pulled back his length even a little, Babar Azam would surely play some high shot and Babar did exactly that, but the speed of the ball turned out to be much more than he expected. The ball could not be middled by Babar's bat and finally the ball was saved in the hands of Race Topley on the boundary.In his second over, Mark Wood started firing at Hyder Ali with such intensity that he too seemed to be in a quandary and, defending himself for four, played a lightning-fast delivery towards short mid-wicket. Thus, in pursuit of 221 runs, Pakistan had lost the third wicket for 21 runs in the fifth over.
In such a situation, it was not at all difficult to predict what would be the outcome of the rest of Pakistan's innings, where the middle order is already under various debates. As the target was a mountain for the middle order and it was also a rare day of joint failure for Babar and Rizwan, there should be no immediate post-mortem.
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