The fans have been out in force in Multan this week, but not, as might be justified, to protest against the failings of a Pakistan team that has now lost six Tests in a row. Instead, they’ve been whirring away at either end of the heavily-watered strip of concrete that doubled as a record-breaking Test wicket during last week’s first Test, willing it to transmogrify into something completely out of character.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, but this has been an extraordinary response to last week’s humiliating series opener. To lose by an innings after scoring 556 is akin to being eaten by a shark while sitting at the top of a tree. It’s been an assault on Pakistan’s perception of reality, and an open invitation to paranoia, with the sense that nowhere is safe from an England team that has now transcended the hosts’ conditions to win four away Tests on the bounce.
Who knows what awaits after the fans have done their bit, besides a rather lower-scoring contest than was the case over the first five days of this pitch’s existence. The cracks that played their part in reducing Pakistan to 82 for 6 in their second innings are bound to bring the spinners into the game from the outset of this second Test, which could in theory concertina the entire contest and increase Pakistan’s chances of claiming the 20 wickets that so clearly eluded them first-time out.
Quite who takes those wickets remains to be seen, however. Of the three seamers who actually acquitted themselves pretty well in miserable conditions last week, both Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah have been dropped, while Abrar Ahmed – Pakistan’s first-choice red-ball spinner – will miss this contest after being hospitalised midway through the last. Mir Hamza was named in the squad as a left-arm new-ball option but has been overlooked in favour of three spinners. Noman Ali, Sajid Khan and Zahid Mahmood are at least experienced spinning options, but none of them has played a first-class fixture in nine months.
And, even if it’s hard to imagine the bowling challenge getting any tougher than it was in that first Test, Pakistan’s pitch policy has had the unintended consequence of strengthening England’s batting. On his return from a serious hamstring tear, there’s no way that Ben Stokes could have been expected to shoulder the seam-bowling loads that Chris Woakes and Gus Atkinson carried in that game. Instead, with Jack Leach and Shoaib Bashir likely to find plenty to keep them interested, he is able to slot back in as the third seamer, and give an already mighty batting line-up an extra layer of menace at No.6.
For England, the primary challenge may be a mental one. Harry Brook and Joe Root went to the wall during their epic 454-run stand in the first Test, with the effort of endurance in Multan’s sweltering heat at least equal to that posed by Pakistan’s attack. Finding the will to start again from scratch, especially on what is nominally the same surface, could be an interesting psychological experiment.
That said, there are plenty of hungry batters elsewhere in that England order, including both Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, who let huge hundreds slip through their own fingers … and the luckless Ollie Pope, who spanked his second ball to midwicket for 0 after taking one for the team as a stand-in opener. Much as Freddie Flintoff might be doing for failed contestants on Bullseye later this year, he then had to “look at what you could have won” as the prizes were paraded before him.
It was notable how quickly Shan Masood turned his ire onto his bowlers in the aftermath of Pakistan’s innings defeat. On the one hand, he had a point: England claimed 19 wickets (with Abrar absent) to Pakistan’s seven, and so his assertion that “good teams find a way” had some merit. On the other, that ignored a grievous collapse in standards in Pakistan’s second innings, in which Masood himself was deeply culpable. Notwithstanding an excellent 151 in the first innings (which was also his first century since the tour of England four years ago), he should have been caught twice before popping a dolly to midwicket for 11 on that fateful fourth evening.
