Three stats to define England 3 Pakistan 0: Robinson rocks, woeful tourists and calm after chaos

England completed their clean sweep of Pakistan, prevailing by eight wickets in the third Test at Edgbaston with Joe Root and Jordan Cox taking the team home after a tricky start to their second innings with unbeaten half centuries.

It was a one-sided rubber largely played in bowler-friendly conditions, with no batter from either side scoring a century — despite the hosts scoring 400 twice in the series — and ‘wobble seam’ the tactic of the moment.

Here, Ben Jones picks out three stats that tell the story of the series.

---

Ollie Robinson’s golden summer

Ollie Robinson could hardly have imagined a better return to Test cricket. Recalled by Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum in the final hours of their leadership, he proved to be the old regime’s gift to the next: an attack leader.

His dominance, in numerical terms, in the Pakistan series is a historic outlier: 21 wickets across three Tests, at a scarcely believable average of 8.76.

The last time a bowler took as many wickets as Robinson, at a better average, was Tony Lock back in 1958. There are only three other instances where a bowler has done so, all of them in the 19th century. What Robinson has achieved this summer is once-in-a-generation rare.

Robinson has always had this sort of performance in his game.

There are understandable caveats around how he performs when the game goes deep, when he’s forced into a third, fourth, fifth spell. His fitness does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. But to focus on the negatives is to undermine a skillset that many bowlers would kill for. Very few bowlers in the world are as accurate, and even fewer match that with his knack for extracting movement, either through the air or off the pitch.

Robinson’s wickets against Pakistan

There is still the faint sense of a missed opportunity with Robinson.

With better man-management across the last few years, he could have been central to England’s ambitions, easing the transition from Stuart Broad and James Anderson, and leading the charge in atypically helpful conditions in Australia. To have a seamer averaging 19, five years into his Test career, and for that player to have only just topped 100 wickets is a failure of management.

However, we are where we are. Robinson is now the figurehead of the attack, and with plenty of cricket to come in the next 12 months, he’ll be making up for lost time.

---

Pakistan have issues

At times in this series, Pakistan have been on top of England with the ball, not least on the final day of the series when they had the hosts 2-2 in pursuit of 130 to win.

Firmly in the column of pyrrhic victories, but Pakistan head home without an English batter scoring a century against them. Mohammad Abbas has been effective throughout, Ali Usman is a rare spinner to have success at Headingley, and, while expensive, Razaullah has bowled sharply and with incision this week.

The final day at Edgbaston was the first time that pressure looked like it might end in victory, but regardless, the visitors have competed with the ball in hand.

Obviously, the issue has been the batting.

Pakistan have played 162 Test series in their history, and only eight times have they averaged less than in this tour. Saud Shakeel, with 97, may end the tour with the highest individual score on either side — remarkably, this was the first three Test series in England since 1888 to not see a century scored — and Razaullah’s thrilling display of hitting was a positive note to end on.

But make no mistake: this has been a shocker. Only one of their innings has passed 200. The rot remains.

Their false shot percentage — the number of times their batters edged or missed the ball — is 33 per cent. It’s the highest a team have ever recorded in a series, since the data began to be collected 20 years ago, but that context isn’t really necessary.

One in three balls, Pakistan’s batters haven’t been in control. That is simply not good enough, if they have any expectations of competing.

---

After the chaos, the calm

The first series of the English summer was a chaotic affair, on and off the field. A combination of injuries, suspensions and tactical calls meant that England went through 16 players in the three matches against New Zealand. You have to go back to 1986 to find the last time they used more players in a three-Test series.

The overwhelming tone was one of panic and inconsistency.

In that light, this series has been a remarkable turnaround. Across the three Pakistan Tests, England have been unchanged, using the same 11 players at Leeds, London and Birmingham.

The first two matches both being shortened affairs made it easy to stick with the same attack, with nobody worn down from days in the field, but England could have rung the changes for this final Test and chose not to. Perhaps a reflection of their much-discussed ruthlessness; perhaps an indicator of the quality outside of this core group.

Either way, it’s the first time England have gone unchanged through a series of three Tests or more since 2010.

A sense of calm and structure has returned to the England side under Root’s stewardship. That calm will be tested with difficult tours ahead; South Africa and Bangladesh will provide contrasting conditions but both tough challenges for a side who are only just getting used to winning again.

But with some clear strategic calls — the shift to a four-man pace attack, a more restrained approach with the bat — the England men’s Test team is in a better place at the end of the summer than the start. And that was not a given.

Data and visualisations from CricViz