At almost exactly 4.19pm on the second day of the second Test something almost happened. The sun, only ever grudgingly present, appeared just enough overhead to offer a lime green sheen to the late-season outfield, as weathered as an antique heirloom carpet.
Pakistan had gradually slumped under the table between lunch and tea at Lord’s. They were lolling at 110 for nine, product of 37 overs of almost entirely anonymous batting. This is an unusual Pakistan, if only in their absolute and unyielding ordinariness. The classic Pakistan Test team are an uneasy balance of stars, perhaps a little overwhelmed by their own weapons: speed, seam, spin, luminous top-order batting, all mixed in with the ballast of some unspectacular other guys.
This Pakistan are something else. This is like watching an entire team of other guys, an Other Guys XI. No actual guys. Just those guys.
At 4.20pm the sun was still just about there as Mohammad Abbas, Pakistan’s 36-year-old tailender, braced his knees and faced up to Jofra Archer, gliding in horribly from the Pavilion End. The ball from Archer was 90mph, back of a length and on Abbas’s hip, propelled from that oddly chilling run and gather, the arm that seems to hold itself very slightly in place before whipping down in a controlled arc, all grace and high physical craft.
Abbas rocked back and defended, left arm jerking down like a man surprised by a hornet at a picnic. The ball struck somewhere near the shoulder of his bat and travelled in a slow arc towards mid-off, where Josh Tongue dived and fell just short with Archer, bent double, watching this tableau play out.
The next ball was full, eluding the guesswork of Abbas’s airy drive, the kind of shot you might play with a loofah in the bathroom mirror. The stumps were splayed with a lovely thick clunking sound. Abbas was already walking off as he finished his swing, the innings closed.
Archer was utterly high grade here, charged with menace and easy power, and producing not only his fastest Test-match opening spell but a kind of one-man elite sport event that felt entirely separate to the cricket match taking place whenever he wasn’t bowling.
He clearly loves running in from that Pavilion End, likes the slope in his legs, the low gauze sight screen behind him, the shifting throng of men in salmon trousers. But there was also something oddly brittle about this spectacle, almost exactly seven years on from his debut on this ground.
The dismissal of Abbas left him with three for 26 from 11.2 overs, on a day when he could have had five, seven, eight, whatever. And through all that he looked like a rare bird, out there reeling off its remaining rare bird moments on a stage that feels like it is itself sagging under the weight of time and change.
This was a strange day of Test cricket, and a strange version of Lord’s in August. For the most part the vibe was a kind of nothingness. The vibe was: no vibe. Not exactly garbage cricket, not exactly that. But at times, maybe that.
Even on the concourses by the Nursery End there was a dog days feel. Traditional British Fudge, the sign by the stairs announced, among the usual fried crispy crumb stuff, the desultory Pimm’s, a flute of throat-clagging white wine, and in between the strollers and stragglers, odd weaving figures in shorts, ties and crumpled linen. Saturday is already promising a Chornobyl of rain.
On the field Pakistan have looked not so much underprepared or underdone, as just not very good. The entire setup is damaged structurally by its exclusion from an India-centred universe, and harpooned from within by its own room-temperature team selection.
Even here the Test team feels like it has been shunted to the wings of the summer. But then this is how we treat that shamefaced old red-ball game, like an awkward maiden aunt with a legacy still to give. Days like this are what happens when Test cricket is asked to give a little bit of itself away too many times in return for the promise of money later. Once again, a classic British fudge.
Here we had Archer to illuminate the day, touching 94mph, peppering the thigh pad, the hip, the point of the shoulder. At times there was the strange sight of Pakistan’s Test-match batters doing things club players do when the gangly 15-year-old is cranking it up, swatting down with the bottom hand, ducking when you don’t really need to duck, you just haven’t seen it, trying to keep this thing off you.
The odd catch was dropped. Lbws were narrowly reprieved. Azan Awais was beaten 14 times outside his off stump.
Meanwhile at the other end, Ollie Robinson rumbled in like a combine harvester trundling across the horizon, doing skilful things with the seam and the angles. It might be tempting to look at this as a partnership, to eulogise a perfectly balanced attack. But Pakistan also collapsed like a soggy marzipan castle. And also, well, you kind of expect Robinson to hoover up four for 11 in these conditions. This was excellence in its least surprising form.
Whereas Archer was the one element of fire here, a note of excellence that felt like it was holding the whole day together at times.
It has been a strange career. Seven years ago, there was talk of gamechanging menace, of a Jonah Lomu effect, a cricketer for whom, in the words of Ben Stokes, the sky was the limit.
It took England six months to break him for the first time. In November Archer bowled 42 overs in a single innings in Mount Maunganui. In December he trudged his way through a full-bore eight-over fitness Test under the eyes of Chris Silverwood, already with a stress fracture in his elbow.
That Test career has been brief, interrupted, and somehow never quite facing forward at the right time. By the end of the day the outline numbers stood at 77 wickets at 28 (could have been so much more; might still have been so much less). And with the sense now of a career that will be remembered for these scattered moments of light.
