England vs Pakistan: Captain's choice to return to crease asks questions of a more modern Test era

Alastair Cook's decision not to enforce the follow-on against Pakistan on Sunday divided opinion

It has become cricket’s Hamlet question - “To follow-on or not to follow-on?”

In the second Test against Pakistan, a match England need to win after going one down in the series, Alastair Cook chose not to ask Pakistan to strap on their pads again after his bowlers had dismissed them for 198, a total which gave his team a first innings’ lead of 391.

Predictably, this triggered something akin to mass fulmination among many of the game’s observers, for whom a good game is a quick game. After all, hadn’t Cook asked Sri Lanka to follow-on twice in the previous series, winning both matches in the process?

But just as people were debating the pros and cons of Cook and Alex Hales taking guard for the second time in the match, down came the Manchester rain to add another element to the argument of should he or shouldn’t he. In fact, he and Hales faced just 21 overs between the showers, extending England’s lead to 489 with two days remaining.

The trend for not enforcing the follow-on is thought, incorrectly as it happens, to have occurred after Steve Waugh’s Australia took the mother of all hammerings from India, after Waugh made them follow-on at Eden Gardens in 2001.

In that Test, Australia took a lead of 247 runs on first innings only for it to be vaporised by VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid, who helped India notch up 657 for seven declared when they followed-on. The Aussies were then dismissed to lose by 171 runs, an outcome that contributed to them losing the series. As a result, many in India claim the match as the Koh-i-noor in the country’s long Test history, its elevated status in cricket’s folklore shared by another famous victory after following-on, England’s over Australia at Headingley in 1981.

Although humiliated in Kolkata, Waugh was not contrite. He had seven more opportunities to enforce the follow-on during his captaincy and took them all, winning all seven matches. It was actually his successor as Australia’s captain, Ricky Ponting, and the man who succeeded him, Michael Clarke, who more often than not declined to enforce the follow-on, preferring instead to give the bowlers a break and to increase scoreboard pressure by batting again, while also hoping for more wear and tear to degrade the pitch.

England achieved one of the most memorable follow-on victoies in 1981, beating Australia at Headingley (Getty)

Cook will not speak on the matter until the end of the match though it will only be an issue if England fail to win comfortably. But just in case it turns messy let us ponder the reasons and thought processes behind the England captain's decision.

The most likely one, a la Ponting and Clarke, is that he felt his bowlers needed a break. Plausible, but surely not a major concern given they had bowled just under 42 overs since the start of the third day’s play. That is not a lot for a five-man attack, especially when conditions - cloudy, 18C degrees - were perfect for bowling.

It is a factor. Before 1991, players could look forward to a rest day so not enforcing a follow-on was never really considered an option. Also, there were no back-to-back Tests to run down the batteries, though that argument would have had more sway had this been the first Test of the series, rather than the second, following which there is an eight-day break.

Instead of reading the runes, as their predecessors would have done, modern captains appear to be in thrall to the data, in this case that which is being transmitted from the bowlers’s smart vests to an algorithm which dictates when they enter the various zones of fatigue (amber, red, green etc). And while Ben Stokes face was red from his bowling exertions, it is difficult to imagine that his nine overs yesterday sent him off the scale.

To most minds and eyes, Pakistan looked down if not quite out when they were dismissed first time around. They certainly did not look up for another knock on a pitch upon which their unease was palpable and which seemed to be getting quicker and bouncier by the session. But data rules these days, often at the expense of gut feeling.

Another factor Cook might have taken into his equation are the conditions, especially the pitch. Could it worsen considerably, making batting last trickier than earlier in the match? Doubtful. Although one of Moeen Ali’s off-breaks produced a puff of dust (probably from footholes created by Pakistan’s trio of left-armers), the consensus from Sky’s merry band of commentators, who get to feel, prod and poke the playing surface every day, is that it is hard and solid and not about to disintegrate.

The stats for making teams follow-on are pretty emphatic. In the 311 games where it had occurred until the end of 2015, four have been won by the team forced to follow-on, 237 by the team enforcing it, and 70 had been drawn.

The historical data insists Cook should have enforced, yet he has done the opposite, confident, presumably, that neither the Manchester weather nor Pakistan’s batsmen (in terms of batting out the remainder of the match), will have any nasty surprises in store for him.