Unrelenting cavalry charge in image of unique leader Stokes

It was unique, what England did with their bats in Rawalpindi yesterday, in becoming the first Test team to score 500 runs on the first day of a series.

And it was unique because England have never had such an attacking captain as Ben Stokes. England’s batting performance was simply an extension of what Stokes did in his first innings after being appointed the Test captain. He played himself in for a few balls for Durham at Worcester, then took every bowler down, hitting 17 sixes, a County Championship record. A simple mission statement: attack fearlessly. All that England’s players had to do was follow suit.

And so, they did in Pakistan.

From the racing start by Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, everybody scored about a run a ball or faster, and not big hitting, either. It was batting without inhibition, yet was full of discretion, judgment and skilled placement, especially through use of the reverse-sweep. Traditional, orthodox batting married to all the latest white-ball skills.

Led by a 19-year-old, Pakistan’s attack was dreadfully naive as they bowled both sides of the wicket, their captain Babar Azam was far too easy-going, and the pitch was a flat belter, without any of the bounce that had troubled Harry Brook in Australia. Still, it was magnifique, and unprecedented, this cavalry charge by the heavy brigade.

Stokes’s men translated their unique approach abroad from the moment Crawley scored 14 off the opening over, to set the tone and the first record of England’s most prolific batting day.

England’s approach in Pakistan had always been safety first. In the first Test of their 1977-78 series in Lahore, Geoffrey Boycott took 4hr 50min to reach 50. Crawley took less than an hour; he and Duckett had posted 200 on the board before the ball began to reverse-swing and soften, and the pitch began to suggest that it will keep low.

When England play Australia next summer, you would not necessarily assume that Duckett will make more runs than Alex Lees or Rory Burns, his two immediate predecessors as England’s left-handed opener, would have done: against pace, he aims to score dangerously square of the wicket on the off side if the ball is bouncing. In Pakistan, it does not, and when the spinners came on, Duckett proved himself to be as proactive and resourceful as any England batsman has been against spin, Joe Root included.

The England record that Crawley and Duckett beat for most runs in the opening session was set in 1938,