As a cricketing act of self-immolation, Harry Brook’s needless run-out on the second morning against Pakistan is not easily bettered. Brook’s pained look to the skies while tossing his bat up in the air in despair revealed a man who knew that this end was unbecoming of the world’s No 1 Test batsman.

Paradoxically, the knowledge of how well Brook played in compiling 75 at Edgbaston only served to heighten his frustration. Rather than the crisp brutality that invariably characterises his batting, the defining quality of Brook’s innings was less familiar: his judgment.

Kevin Pietersen, who will now work alongside Brook in his new role as England’s white-ball mentor, was one of the Yorkshireman’s cricketing heroes. Brook is a similarly singular talent in England’s middle order.

Brook has long shown the same elan, creative shot-making and contempt for reputations that characterised Pietersen. But he has not always displayed the calculating thinking that was an underappreciated facet of Pietersen’s greatness.

“I played situations,” Pietersen told Telegraph Sport last year. “There was a lot of method in my madness. Sometimes, in this new set-up, I don’t see method. I just see madness.”

For all his talent and an already brilliant body of work in an England shirt, madness has sometimes trumped method in Brook’s international career. He has already amassed a series of Test dismissals that, in isolation, look gruesome.

At Lord’s in the 2023 Ashes, after England had already collapsed against the short ball, Brook spliced Mitchell Starc to cover. In the second innings at Perth in the last Ashes opener, Brook attempted to drive third ball, slashing Scott Boland to the slips. Next innings, Brook stubbornly persisted with this approach – driving with the ball bouncing above knee height – and succumbed to Starc at a critical juncture.

Perhaps worst of all was Brook’s harum-scarum innings against New Zealand at Trent Bridge this year. Drunk on the brief euphoria created by Ben Stokes’s announcement of his retirement, Brook scooped and flogged his way to 21 until flicking his ninth ball straight to fine leg.

New Zealand’s fielders were reduced to laughing, so bizarre was Brook’s approach to a target of 373. Brook himself admitted that the situation demanded a little more refinement. “In hindsight, I could have just got the field out and knocked it for one, but I was well into trying to take them on,” he said.

Any criticism of Brook’s approach needs to be tempered. In many ways, the unpalatable dismissals are simply the inevitable corollary of playing with Brook’s lack of inhibition. These methods have earned him 3,610 Test runs at an average of 53.08.

Yet these returns have been ticking uncomfortably downwards: in 11 Tests since the end of last summer, Brook averages 41.6 and hasn’t made a century. Such relative difficulties show Brook’s need to evolve if he is to realise the full extent of his talent.

After arriving at 39 for three on the first evening, Brook showed a player with new range. Respecting the threat posed by the contrasting pair of Mohammad Abbas and Razaullah, Brook took 17 balls to score his first boundary. This initial caution was the prelude to a flurry of 23 runs in 11 balls.

Pakistan responded to this counter-attack by spreading their field out. Brook recognised how this approach allowed him to accumulate largely risk-free. He reined in his tempo in the last hour of play, knowing that conditions would be easier to bat on the second day.

So they were. With the Birmingham sun out, and the ball offering less-pronounced seam movement, Brook and Dan Lawrence added 73 in the first 10 overs of the second day. While Lawrence attacked with gusto, Brook settled into an unfamiliar role: as supporting actor. During their alliance on the second morning, Lawrence dominated the strike, and contributed 47 to Brook’s 23.

Brook, then, was poised for the sort of innings that has eluded him so far in his Test career: a clinical, gargantuan century, defined less by pyrotechnics than patience. The wonder of Brook, and a measure of how his shot-making drives opponents to deploy defensive fields, is that this batting came while still scoring at a strike rate of 77.

Such work only made Brook’s dismissal more exasperating. Flicking Saim Ayub’s innocuous off spin into the on side, Brook started to run as if by right, ignoring the inconvenient fact that he had hit the ball straight to Shan Masood. Brook’s despair was for frittering away over three hours of exemplary Test match batting with one needless run.

The upshot is that Brook has extended his own wait for an 11 th Test-match century. He has now gone 11 Tests and 13 months since his last hundred, against India at The Oval last summer. That is an uncomfortably long wait for a man ranked No 1 Test batsman, even if that hiatus also reflects the global difficulties against the wobble seam.

For Brook, you suspect, a century would also have had an element of catharsis. The period since his 10 th Test hundred has been marked by the fallout from his altercation with a nightclub bouncer when leading England’s white-ball side. The Wellington incident ultimately robbed Brook of the England Test captaincy.

Yet Brook’s pained expression while he trudged back to England’s dressing room should not obscure that, for his Test batting, this has been a summer of progress. Brook’s average of 43.2 this season is 20 runs more than the overall average this Test season; it is also 16 runs more than Root.

Brook will end this summer as a more rounded and complete Test batsman than the one seen last winter. There is now more method to support his madness. England’s looming challenges – in South Africa and Bangladesh this winter, and against Australia next summer – will give Brook the chance to cement his status as world No 1.