Stumps! England back on top
49th over: England 202-5 (Brook 74, Stokes 16) Babar, trying something different at last, gives Agha Salman a go with his off-breaks. The batters milk him for a few singles and that is the close, with England back in control after threatening to teeter into a ditch.
Harry Brook and Ben Duckett, two fringe figures, have played like elder statesmen, easing their way to 150 between them. Nobody else made many but Ben Stokes is still there, in his sober white-ball mode so far, ready to revert to red in tooth and claw tomorrow. England lead by 281, which happens to be what they scored in their first innings.
Their spinners, Jack Leach and Joe Root, surprised us this morning by engineering a Pakistan collapse. Root may be in danger of becoming a bowler who bats a bit. For Pakistan, Abrar Ahmed has ten wickets on debut – two of them Root’s – but as things stand he must feel he is heading for defeat.
Thanks for your company and correspondence. We’ll be back first thing tomorrow for the third and possibly last day of this fast-forward Test. In the meantime, does anyone know of some other England match we can find to entertain us?
Updated
48th over: England 197-5 (Brook 72, Stokes 13) Stokes, making himself more comfortable against Abrar, pulls the googly for two. A camera catches a flock of somethings wheeling round in a peachy sky, as if they’re wondering what’s going on.
Talking of birds, here’s John Tumbridge. “TMS told us earlier that Duncan Fletcher (remember him?) is currently in South Africa and is attempting to photograph every one of the 970 bird species in Southern Africa. He’s currently on about 750 after five years. Is there ever a more perfect 100% overlapping Venn diagram than bird-watching and cricket?” Ha. Not quite 100, as I’ve just demonstrated, but an interesting point.
