Zak Crawley’s extraordinary 189 deservedly took the headlines on a breathless day two at Emirates Old Trafford but the afternoon carnage wouldn’t have been possible without the foundation partially laid down by Moeen Ali, writes Yas Rana.

As England finish day two in total control of the fourth Test, it’s easy to forget that just two and a half sessions ago they were in a familiarly precarious predicament.

Mitchell Starc had just done for Ben Duckett, with the England opener falling caught behind for the third time in four innings. The score was 9-1 and Moeen Ali walked out to the crease at three.

How did we get here? A week before the series Moeen was happily retired from Test cricket, contently drifting from one T20 bash to another. In the last year, he’s won the IPL with Chennai Super Kings, the T20 World Cup with England, the Bangladesh Premier League with Comilla Victorians, and played in the T20 Blast, The Hundred and the Abu Dhabi T10. He hadn’t played a Test since the 2021 summer and since the 2019 Ashes had played just four first-class matches of any kind. Four games in four years.

The rest is history. He answered the S.O.S call and then went above and beyond the call of duty, volunteering to fill the hole at three when Ollie Pope went down with a shoulder injury at Lord’s and no one else was particularly keen to do it. Today, batting at first-drop in the first innings of a Test for just the third time in his career, he put together a 54 that laid the foundations for what was to follow.

Joe Root’s implied reluctance to bat three speaks volumes of the job that Moeen and Crawley did after the wicket of Duckett. In many ways Root, having batted at three 59 times in Test cricket, was the obvious man to do the job. But the one true champion batter in the England line-up clearly holds value in the extra cushioning that’s afforded to him when he comes in at four, rather than three.

Today, as he compiled a sumptuous 84 in the slipstream of Crawley, his entry point, in the 28th over rather than the third, was significant. If the Australian wheels were off by tea, the screws were at least loosened by the time Moeen departed for 54 with the deficit reduced to under 200.

Moeen’s innings was striking in its simplicity. Sure, there were the trademark purring cover drives on the up but he absorbed pressure when it needed to be absorbed. For all the external speculation about his brief potentially being to hit the hardness out of the ball, he let Australia have short periods where the run-scoring dried up if the quality of bowling demanded it.

His first 25 deliveries at the crease yielded just the solitary boundary. He went up through the gears as Australia’s accuracy waned. Two half-volleys in Josh Hazlewood’s fifth over were sent dismissively to the fence and Moeen was on his way. It was the start of a proper No. 3, which lest it be forgotten, is what Moeen was for much of his career.

There was a stat doing the rounds in the build-up to the Old Trafford Test that showed that no one in either Ashes squad has more County Championship runs from No. 3 than Moeen. With 3,544 runs at 52, he’s the most experienced No.3 in the England squad.

Moeen has performed so many roles depending on where the holes in the sides have been across his England career that it’s easy to forget that actually, his first Test call-up followed sustained heavy run-scoring from No. 3 for Worcestershire.

England have suffered two key injuries this summer, one to their spinner, the other to their No.3. Typically, Moeen has filled both roles. With eight players in the XI who debuted eight or more years ago, there has been a sense that the band has got back together. Moeen is simultaneously playing the bass guitar and the drums, holding the rhythm and beat together while the others steal the show.

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