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The captain of England, Ben Stokes, expressed his regret to his team for his outburst of annoyance on the third night in Multan, when his team’s dominance over the second Test against Pakistan started to unravel due to a series of misplayed balls and poor fielding.
After missing the first Test match last week and their home series against Sri Lanka due to a hamstring tear, Stokes is back in the team for the first time in nine weeks. He told Sky Sports that he had played like a “tired and grumpy old man” when he had yelled at his players at a crucial point in Pakistan’s second innings.
The crisis occurred during Brydon Carse’s enthusiastic spell of reverse-swing bowling, which had just seen off Mohammad Rizwan for the third time in the series, raising the possibility that England could limit Pakistan to less than 150 runs in the second innings.
After pursuing Salman Agha for two overs, though, Carse dropped two in three balls – first on 4 when Jamie Smith spilt a standard nick behind the stumps, and again on 6 when Joe Root, standing unusually close at first slip, failed to close his hands around a fenced edge off the back foot. Salman would go on to score 63 off 89 balls, which would define the innings.
Stokes then let out a roar of exasperation when Jack Leach fumbled at point to give away an unnecessary single in Carse’s next over. This was understandable given the circumstances, but it was uncharacteristic of a captain who has championed a blame-free environment during his two-and-a-half-year reign.
“I actually apologised to the group up there last night,” Stokes said afterwards. “It’s the first time in my captaincy that I’ve let my emotions show in my body language, with how I was feeling as the game was unfolding. I owned up to that, and I’m very annoyed at myself for letting that out.
“It’s something that I don’t want to do, or be seen to be doing,” he added. “No one means to drop catches, but it just proves how important catches are out in these subcontinent conditions, because they don’t come along that often. So I apologised to the group and said that was poor of me. I was a tired and grumpy old man last night. You won’t see that happen again.”
The head coach of England, Brendon McCullum, acknowledged that he was taken aback by Stokes’s decision to voice his opinion on the issue, but he attributed his frustration to the fiery nature of Stokes. He said that without it, Stokes would not have been able to push himself to recover from a significant hamstring strain and return to full fitness so quickly.
McCullum, a former Test wicketkeeper, also supported Smith’s performance following his costly error on the third night. It was a rare setback in an otherwise excellent start to Smith’s England career, as his twin scores of 21 and 6 were his lowest contribution with the bat over the course of eight Tests. Smith had made three clean takes in the first innings.
“You will not get a tougher set of conditions to keep wicket on,” McCullum said. “Jamie’s very disappointed about dropping that catch. But you take that out, I thought his keeping was as good as I’ve seen in these conditions, particularly from a foreign wicketkeeper.
“He’s just continuing to impress, and obviously in both innings, he’s trying to put pressure on the opposition on that surface, which is very difficult, but that’s his natural game. He’s turning into a really big player for us.