Watch: England cricketers show off fabulous, ‘first-attempt’ football skills

The England men’s test team endured a relatively lukewarm day-one in their test match against Pakistan at the Old Trafford. While the hosts did gain some advantage early on in the day, with wickets of Abid Ali and captain Azhar Ali; the tourists, led by Babar Azam (69 of 100) and Shan Masood (46 of 152) scripted a strong turn-around. Day-two, however, has started rather promisingly for Joe Root and his men. England’s senior-most players, Stuart Broad and James Anderson, finally joined the party, and sent Babar and new-comer Asad Shafiq back to the hut shortly after play resumed. An interesting day of test-cricket coming up, rest assured. 

Something equally interesting happened yesterday in the English pavilion during an interim of bad-light break. One would expect that the players would be cooling-off in their break-time, especially following some rather hectic couple of hours. The English cricketers, though, begged to differ; and looked eager to stay match-ready with some warm-up exercises. A casual game of ‘football-headers’, in this case. But the way the game finished was anything, but casual. 

England’s fabulous ‘first-attempt’ football touchdown

It started with Jimmy Anderson heading the ball to his captain Root. Root head-passed the ball to Chris Woakes, who headbutted it to Mark Wood, positioned below the stands. Wood passed it to Jos Buttler (on-field, on the boundary line); Buttler to Dom Bess (back in the enclosure); Bess to Ollie Pope, Pope back Wood, who finally hit the bull’s eye and successfully touched it down to a can. This prompted a big celebration- both from the English players and commentators David Lloyd and Mike Atherton on air. Thankfully, the ECB Twitter handle got it all recorded on tape and uploaded it on their account. 

‘First attempt’? Not really…

Well, the ECB went on a bit of an exaggeration in captioning the footage. ‘They did on this on their first attempt…’, they claimed. But BBC broadcaster Tim Peach soon exposed that lie through a crash-test video. Oops!