And in the process, threw up a riddle of sorts that the selectors will have to unravel before the third and final Cornhill Test be- gins at the Oval in ten days time.
The selection committee is slated to meet on Saturday night and with the England batting finally coming together against the famed Pakistan bowling lineup, Raymond Illingworth and company are now thinking of how to win the final Test, not save it.
Put simply, if England is to win it must manage to bowl Pak- istan out twice. And to do that, it needs more firepower than was pro- vided at Headingley by the four-member attack of Chris Lewis, Dominic Cork, Allan Mullally and Andrew Caddick.
The question of who the fifth bowler will be is secondary - the first question is, how do the selectors squeeze the extra bowler in? Illingworth, for his part, has been favouring the tactic of using in-form opener Alec Stewart in the wicketkeeper's role, drop- ping Jack Russell and freeing that slot of an extra bowler. Illy, in fact, wanted to go that route at Headingley but the other selectors, in- cluding captain Michael Atherton, shot that down.
Stewart, whose 170 at Leeds in the first innings won him the man of the match award and sealed his comeback bid, appeared to incline to the view that Russell was a vital cog in the England machinery, and that it would be foolish to drop him. ''Jack Russell is the best wicketkeeper in the world and it would be very unfair on him if he was left out,'' Stewart said.
Both Atherton and Stewart seemed in agreement over the fact that the latter was filling the opener's role to perfection, and that the additional task of keeping wickets at Test level would prove too much of a burden.
''But, of course,'' added Atherton with his trademark wry grin, ``I'm only one of five selectors so I imagine this question will be discussed again on Saturday night. And if the selection committee comes to the conclusion that Alec keeping wicket is the best way for us to win the Oval Test, then that will be it.''
Stewart too indicated that though he himself was not excactly chuffed about the prospect of keeping wickets and then opening the batting, he would do just that if the selection committee decided to give him the double role. In a lighter vein, Stewart even suggested that England's problems had a ready solution the use of skipper Atherton as the fifth bowler. ``Athers showed us today what a good leg break bowler he is, that obviously solves our problems,'' grinned Stewart, referring to how the England skipper livened proceedings during the last half hour at Leeds when he not only turned his arm over in emulation of Mushtaq Ahmed, but even got the wicket of good friend and Lancashire team-mate Wasim Akram, whom he claimed LBW.
Atherton for his part argued that England has won Tests at the Oval in recent times with just four bowlers, but admitted that the absence of Graeme Hick with his off spinners did reduce England's bowl- ing options somewhat.
With thinking veering towards a five-member attack at the Oval, the selectors will be looking at either fast bowler Devon Mal- colm, who has been in great form this season with 61 wickets already under his belt, or spinners Ian Salisbury and Phil Tuffnell, to fill that fifth slot.
Interestingly, while the England bowlers were wayward in the Pakistan first innings, they performed considerably better when the tourists batted the second time round on the final day. At one stage, with England leading by 53 runs on the first innings, Pakistan were in dire straits at 34 for two - and this despite Graham Thorpe floor- ing Sadab Kabir at first slip off Mullally's first over.
After lunch, Inzamam ul Haq who had in the morning thumped the ball around to good purpose for 65 runs, and Salim Malik both fell quickly to the bowling of Caddick, and Pakistan were at that stage just 89 runs ahead. Had Nasser Hussain managed to hang on to an Ijaz Ahmed square drive at backward point, it was even possible that England could have made a determined bid to turn the screws on Akram's outfit.
If the England bowlers had, in the first innings, bowled with the direction and control they showed in the second innings, and if the fielders had taken their catches, it was possible that the home side could have gone on to the Oval all square in the three-Test Cornhill series. In the event, Atherton and his men will now have to think of how to square the series - in the only chance they have to do it.