Ignore the memes, Harry – those splayed stumps speak of Brook's focus on glory

The Guardian

2 days ago

By strict formal logic any serious defence of Harry Brook's stump-splaying dismissal 13 minutes before lunch on the fourth day at Lord's should be showy, ill-timed and based almost entirely on hot air and flimflam.
You could probably also chuck in unapologetic and maddeningly super-cool, peering down from its balcony, guns out, wraparounds in place. Be where your keyboard is. This, mate, this is how we save colour match reporting. It's just the way I sidebar.
Brook will be chastised for that moment of weakness. He has already been mocked and memed on social media. It was a hugely frustrating way to get out, made all the more so by its context. England were 87 for three at the time and paddling for the interval, still semi-intact despite a high grade opening spell from Mohammed Siraj and a bizarrely wicketless Jasprit Bumrah.
Brook and Joe Root were at the wicket, the match all set to veer decisively one way either side of lunch. At which point Brook decided it would be tactically smart to sweep an 83mph ball from Akash Deep, pre-programmed, already going down, and exposing his middle stump which was duly clanked out of the ground.
This was an act of such decorative abandon it felt like watching a pair of escapers crawling for the barbed wire fence, dodging the watchtower lights, only for one of them to decide to stand up and put on an impromptu feat of juggling with a sabre, two grapefruits and a bowling ball.
Brook was playing beautifully at the time, striking the ball with rare clarity on a tough pitch. The previous over from Deep he had gone four, four, six to move to 23 off 18 balls. Both of the first two boundaries came from the Hedgehog Sweep, rolling into a ball and scooping to fine leg, the second one almost for six.
The energy had begun to shift in the ground, a buzz of counterattack in the air. Right up to the moment Brook tried the same thing again in Deep's next over and produced what looks, in isolation, like a witless swipe.
That moment will be well-seasoned red meat to those predisposed to see only feckless entitlement in the Baz-bro mindset, a cult of alpha dog amour-propre. And yet, and yet, and yet. In context, well, it kind of scans.
There are two other things worth saying about it. The first is that this was an excellent piece of captaincy. Shubman Gill might have taken Deep off after the previous over, which also saw him pumped into the pavilion by Brook with a lovely sense of open-shouldered freedom.
Instead Gill kept him on and moved deep backward square leg finer for the ramp shot. India had read their man. The field change encouraged the same shot but squarer. Deep produced a fine delivery, too full for the shot, tailing late, and smashing into the base of middle stump.
Never interrupt your opponent when he's making a mistake, as Sun Tzu, patron saint of inspirational business brunches, once said. This was Bazball decoded. And India's attack were excellent all day, complementary methods expertly deployed.
The second thing, and the real Brook apologia, is that the thought behind the shot did at least make some kind of tactical sense. Conditions had been tricky though the morning. Zak Crawley was basically placed in the stocks in the opening half hour, hit on the hand, wafting constantly, edging and clothing every drive. It was like watching India bowl at a very brave, earnest hatstand.
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Nitish Kumar Reddy came on and Crawley exhaled, lifted him over mid-on like Lord Wangleton hitting the under-gardener into the cabbage fields, then spooned a stiff-legged drive to point.
Ben Duckett had looked both comfortable and skittish. There is something adorable about his own version of the rolling sweep, knees bent, paws coiled. It's like watching Paddington bat. But he went slashing for the north circular, leaving Ollie Pope to start, as ever, like a man trying to evade a sniper in the stands.
This was the context of Brook's counterattack, a need to reverse the momentum. Like all outcome-based things, when it fails it looks both wrong and utterly avoidable. But it was at least logical, as opposed to a random brain fade. Even half an hour of batting like this might have shifted the score significantly in a tight game.
The fact is Brook has succeeded like this before. There is a misconception his record is based on flat tracks, on bullying tired bowlers. But there have been some breathtaking tough-pitch hundreds to date in his Test career, compiled playing the same way that killed him at Lord's.
The hundred in his third Test in Multan came in a game where nobody else got one. There was a century off 107 balls when it was doing loads in Wellington, another in Christchurch last November, 123 off 115 balls in Wellington again when England had been 43 for four.
The shapes were terrible here. The highlights reel will look infuriating. But this was at least a thing that has worked before. The difference is to India's credit: excellent captaincy and a good piece of bowling. Plus Brook's own learning curve, the sense of reaching for too much of a good thing all at once.
From that point England struggled to 192 on the back of some graft from Root and Ben Stokes, then took four wickets of their own late on. This Test has now become one of those epic slow burn affairs, there to be won by the seizing of key moments. Brook, at the very least, tried his hand.