The beauty of Marcus Trescothick's batting is that it is so uncomplicated, but his bruising 161 at Edgbaston owed much to his ability to adapt his game where required.

As our graph shows, Trescothick scored most of his runs through the covers, with a series of fleet-footed drives against the spinners, and stand-and-deliver biffs against the seamers. But, what is more notable, is that less than a tenth of his runs came through midwicket. This is normally a key area for Trescothick, especially against the spinners, as he plonks his foot down and slog-sweeps across the line.

But slog-sweeping against the prodigious spin of Muttiah Muralitharan is a dangerous tactic at the best of times, and so Trescothick adapted accordingly: of the 27 runs he scored off Murali, 16 came through the covers and another 8 square on the off side. Only 11% came on the leg side.

In the process, Trescothick continued his outstanding form against Murali. In their head-to-head in Tests he has scored 88 runs off 290 balls, and has never been dismissed. This is a record that few people can match, and not bad for a man who people thought would struggle when England flew out to Sri Lanka 18 months ago.

He was just as judicious against the part-time spinners. The slog-sweep has been getting Trescothick out more and more in recent times, and today he played his innings much more by the textbook. All three of his sixes, off Sanath Jayasuriya and Aravinda de Silva, came from clips or drives straight down the ground. In fact, his most notable sweep of the day was a reverse sweep.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd