Victory at Lords

From the first session, the match was played by Pakistan boys like a well orchestrated symphony. Session after session test cricket discipline was on display. We always had flare but test cricket discipline was not our thing. Yet it was there at Lords. Every little detail seemed to have been worked out and we are talking about Pakistan Cricket Team & its management. Showing great heart on selecting a young team, sending Abbass early to play for Liescester. He adapted & learned to pitch the ball up. It worked against Ireland, it won him man of the match here. Fielding standards immaculate were right up there & much better than aging team of jaded Englishmen. Bowling was supreme & batters showed scrupulous application of patience & set merit of shot on ball rather than instinct. Something we had forgotten since our glory days of 1992 onwards success in shorter formats. Whereas, cricket followers of hundreds & thousands of hours consumed fantasizing this beautiful game know that test cricket is truly cricket. Shorter formats are commercial face of cricket introduced by smart business minds.
Back to historic victory at Lords today, except irresponsible shot by Sarfraz when his team needed him to stay & last session of third day, Pakistan dominated. Its no fluke, it was flawless execution of a well laid plan. And there is tailor-made captain in Sarfraz to make sure that organization, method, involvement & success are all interlinked.
Match was pleasure to watch right from the start till the end. I wished to appreciate the team right from first day but our past mercurial  character held me back from writing some poetic prose on the match. And we had bad history of spot-fixing & abandoned matches. Touchwood, touchwood was only thing in my head but the match concluded on same high note on which it started. Was no less than the cricketing fairytale we saw last summers in Champions Trophy.
Some soul searching for English team & focus for continuity of the effort is on the menu after modest celebrations because series is to be won or drawn which are two different results altogether.