One hundred and 17-run partnerships for England are becoming commonplace at Headingley and a grateful home crowd witnessed another one on Monday night. Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes devastated West Indies’ hopes in the evening session to transform the balance of the match. It was enthralling stuff.
There was another handy union of 117 for England’s eighth wicket here as recently as 1981. On that occasion England were in a deeper hole when Ian Botham and Graham Dilley put on their runs against Australia even more quickly and with many more guffaws.
It was a stand that will live longer in the mind than that of Moeen and Woakes and its ripples were much greater. Even so this partnership between the two gentlest souls of Birmingham was enough to demoralise a West Indies side that had competed tenaciously for three and a half days.
Moeen may be politeness personified but he did not seek to disguise the significance of that quickfire 117. “Our position is massively above expectations,” he said .
“We felt that their heads were going down after tea. So we wanted to keep burying their bowlers. They were getting tired and they were down as a side and we were trying to capitalise.
“Everything came off and that was due to the players at the top of our order, who made them tired. So we pounced on them,” Moeen said.
England’s total of 490 for eight was unusual in that there were no centurions but six players passed fifty. This provided further evidence of the depth of England’s batting even if there are well-documented frailties at the top.
Moeen’s 84 from No8 came from only 93 balls and there was no great surprise that Woakes at nine should end up on 61 not out. This is a ballast and a balance that England will want to maintain throughout the winter.
Woakes reiterated that England’s “fantastic position” owed much to Dawid Malan. His 61 was much more laborious but it sucked the energy out of Shannon Gabriel, Kemar Roach and Jason Holder. Woakes’ presence in the side means the lower-order musketeers, who start with Ben Stokes batting at six, now number four rather than three.
“We feel that we can always dig the side out of a hole,” said Moeen. “There are four of us and one of us will get to the opposition. It’s great when we get runs at the top of the order because then we can really capitalise. We all see ourselves as proper batters.”
Woakes is not the type to predict a straightforward victory. “We are delighted to have the opposition where they are [West Indies need another 319 for victory]. But it is still a half-decent pitch. There should be some variable bounce and some spin but we will have to bowl well and stay patient. It will be a tough day.” He may be right but the expectation was always that it would be much tougher than this for England by the fifth day.
Roddy Estwick, the West Indies bowling coach, who must have been proud of the efforts of his charges until they ran out of juice in Monday’s final session, could take solace only in not so recent history.
He is old enough to remember 1984 at Lord’s when West Indies knocked off the 344 required on the final day in 66 overs with Gordon Greenidge cracking a double century.
Estwick mentioned this with the implication that anything was possible on the final day of this fine, flawed Test match. It is more likely that an England bowling attack, containing all those musketeers, will prevail.