Burns drops Abid Ali in the slips on a day when England should have had more than the five wickets they tookLike a cohort of A-level students staring glumly at grades manipulated through no fault of their own, Azhar Ali would have been inclined to ponder last night on a day when Lady Luck deserted him. It was warm and sunny when he won the toss at 10.30am but by the time the Pakistan captain walked out to bat 40 minutes later, conditions had changed and batting had become a much more strenuous examination than he could have anticipated. Captaincy can roll like that, riding sometimes on the large dollop of luck often referenced by Richie Benaud. Ninety per cent luck and ten per cent skill (“don’t try it without the ten per cent”) was the Benaud adage, not that 200 million or so cricket-mad supporters

Source: The Times August 13, 2020 21:00 UTC