NASSER HUSSAIN: This could be the hardest of Harry Brook’s three centuries so far against Pakistan… he helped rescue England and was hoping to score runs – that attitude will help him
That was a slightly more restrained century from Harry Brook than what we saw in Rawalpindi and Multan, but these things are relative. You still look at the scoreboard and he is hitting 75 runs in every 100 balls.
If anything, it’s the toughest of the three hundreds he’s done in this series. In the first Test, England were in charge on that first day, when Brook was one of four centurions. In the second Test, they were ahead by 350.
Here in Karachi, they fought harder here, and Brooks had to save their innings with the help of Ben Foakes. To surpass David Gower’s record for an Englishman in Pakistan is impressive.
Harry Brook scored his third century in as many Tests for England in Pakistan on Sunday
His knock was different from his previous two tons as he had to rebuild with Ben Foakes
It’s important to point out, however, that for or all of his power hitting and turnovers, Brook has all the basics in place. His technique is good enough to avoid all types of bowling as he hones his game against the red ball playing in Yorkshire.
And that will be crucial next summer when Brook faces his biggest challenge yet – an Ashes series against Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Scott Boland armed with the Dukes ball in favorable conditions .
I fear for the players who think the best way for any side is by playing white-ball cricket. Even Suryakumar Yadav, the new batting star of India’s limited-overs sides, honed his game playing red-ball cricket for several years for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy.
Brook loved batting, and learned the basics playing county cricket for Yorkshire
Brook learned the basics of playing county cricket, and picked up Yorkie’s passion for batting. I was live the other day talking to Ian Ward back in the Sky studio about Brook. He walked past me and said: ‘Yes, Nas – I love batting.’
One of his great skills is how quickly he takes lengths from spinners, which he achieves by standing lower in his stance – he is taller against seamers. So on slow pitches like these in Pakistan, if the slow bowlers are even a fraction short, he pounces. Then, if they are too full to recover, he belts it back over their head.
Even from a stationary position, he has long levers and a strong bottom hand, so he runs while hitting it on the leg side. There’s a touch of Kevin Pietersen in that stroke – it’s almost the old KP flamingo.
I also enjoy his behavior very much. You can see after he runs out Ben Stokes that he won’t let it get the better of him, as you can see when he reaches three figures he doesn’t celebrate much. All he does is score runs. In fact, this is what he hopes to do. That attitude should stand him in good stead for years to come.
Brook gets length from the spinners very well – he expects to score runs when batting
He ran into his captain Ben Stokes but responded well after being given the thumbs up
A quick word about that run-out. You can see he expected the ball to reach four, so he didn’t and Stokes pushed for the second run, but then he sold his captain a dummy. Stokes was about to explode, but realized it was the young gun in the middle. He’s all about the culture of the team, so he just gave Brook a thumbs-up, which was a classy touch.
Brook apologized, but then gathered his thoughts again. Other players may have over-reacted to what happened. But Brook quickly moved on. He won’t go down very low. Equally, he wouldn’t think that he suddenly did it.
Ever since Joe Root came into the side, English cricket has been yearning for a batter who can come in and make us proud in our system. Two or three years ago at The Oval, Root turned to me and said there is one guy we should talk about more. That man was Brook. The way he plays here tells you that Root has been watched.
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