England vs Pakistan: Moeen Ali channels his inner David Gower to steer England back from the brink

Moeen's innings-saving hundred means that England still have a chance of winning this final Test

Moeen Ali steadied the ship when England were teetering (Getty)

England cricket supporters have always admired the aesthetic side of batsmanship and they did so again at the Kia Oval on Thursday, after Moeen Ali made a hundred as decorative as it was face-saving.

Left-handers tend to look more graceful than their right-rand counterparts (Alastair Cook excepted), but Moeen raises this to David Gower-like levels of artistry. What sets him apart from Gower, though, is that he is not above the odd unseemly slog like the one for six that brought up his hundred, something Gower would never countenance except as a protest.

His century, in what is the final Investec Test of the summer, was masterful. He enjoyed a let-off when he was on nine, after Azhar Ali dropped him at second slip off Mohammad Amir, his second spill of the day due to a strange penchant for diving towards the ball instead of waiting for it to come to him with head still. Thereafter, Moeen was majestic, the batting side of his all-rounder’s brain fully commissioned to the task of England’s salvation through entertainment.

It was some feat to pull off but he did it with a style conferred upon the few. Gower, Brian Lara, Garry Sobers, Saeed Anwar and Adam Gilchrist, are all graceful left-handers who could have pulled off something similar, but these are the towering greats of the game.

England were teetering when he came in. Wahab Riaz had reduced the home side to 110 for five when he and Jonny Bairstow began another of the repair jobs for which they are becoming famous.

The pair had added 93 when Bairstow fell for 55 just after tea, though his departure seemed to spur Moeen on to yet greater heights of strokeplay, judging from some of the shots he played. One on-drive, for four, off Wahab was both sublime and dismissive - punishment, at the flick of a wrist, of which Madam Sin would have been proud.

His partnership of 79 for the seventh wicket with Chris Woakes was almost as vital. Although Woakes proved a more than an able partner, he was dismissed before Moeen had reached his third Test hundred.

Moeen Ali celebrates his third Test hundred (Getty)

With Stuart Broad and Steven Finn not really staying long enough to aid his cause, that’s when the cat and mouse with the tail began. In the last Test at Edgbaston, he'd missed out on a hundred after Alastair Cook declared with him on 86. This he was on 89 when number 11, James Anderson, joined him with Pakistan’s tail well and truly up.

A bit of selective strokeplay here, a streaky edge there, and then a mighty six off Yasir Shah, launched high over mid-wicket, brought him his second Test hundred of the summer and his third overall.

The ground rose to acclaim it, fake Mo beards to the fore. He is an immensely popular figure and a superb talent at least with the bat. Indeed, the brilliance of this innings betrayed the dominance batting has within his psyche and why, talented off-spinner that he is, most still regard him as a batsman who bowls despite the selectors stressing that his selection is to fulfil the spinner’s role.

With him in such scintillating batting form, many feel England are too heavy with batting, though first innings totals of 328 here and 297 in the last Test in Birmingham, suggest otherwise. On the back of that premise there is a school of thought, when England go to Asia this winter, which reckons Adil Rashid should bolster England’s spin options at the expense of a middle order batsmen.

The idea has a plausible logic to it, though with England playing just two seamers in India last time, why not go the whole hog and pick three spinners. Like Moeen, Zafar Ansari, of Surrey, can bat as well as bowl spin, in his case left-arm orthodox.

Yet, whichever combination of tweakers they settle upon, it is not top-notch spin in the manner of Graeme Swann or even Monty Panesar, whose pairing in India last time was crucial to winning the series.

And that remains a problem for Moeen. No matter how much he wows us with his strokeplay, and there was mass purring adulation among the Oval crowd, there remains the expectation that he is there to take wickets when conditions allow and that runs, however many are scored and however poetically they are made, are merely an adjunct to that prosaic business.