Lord’s does not forgive loose technique or loose thinking. On a dank, stop-start opening day, it punished both – and still left this second Rothesay Test delicately poised.
England, jostling with the weather, the conditions and an altogether sharper Pakistan attack, crawled, scrapped and counter-punched their way to 248-9. Not commanding. Not disastrous. Just enough to feel like a score you don’t dismiss in a hurry when the clouds hang low over the old ground.
Jamie Smith’s 61 and Jordan Cox’s 55 were the spine of it. Without them, England would have been wreckage.
Abbas Leads Pakistan’s Response to Headingley Humbling
A week ago at Headingley, Pakistan were brushed aside. Out-bowled, out-batted, out-thought. That was never going to last.
Here, with Babar Azam back from a hand injury and back in charge, Pakistan looked like a proper Test attack again. Babar’s first act was a small but important one: he called correctly at the toss. In these conditions, that mattered.
Under steel-grey skies, with the floodlights burning from the start, Muhammad Abbas was immaculate. Relentless lines, late movement, just enough variation. At one stage he ripped through England with three wickets for four runs in 16 balls, slicing out Emilio Gay, Ben Duckett and Joe Root and silencing a crowd that had barely settled in.
Abbas finished with 4-56, figures that flattered England more than him. This was classic Lord’s seam bowling, exploiting the slope, the air, and England’s lingering uncertainty.
Mohammad Ali backed him up with his own brand of menace, taking 3- for himself, all three bowled. Harry Brook, Smith and Ollie Robinson all heard the death rattle as Ali’s deliveries jagged down the slope and crashed into the stumps. On a day like this, leaving the ball felt as risky as playing at it.
Pakistan’s only real failing came in the cordon and behind the stumps. Three drops, all costly in rhythm if not always in runs. Imam-ul-Haq shelled Root on one at third slip – Root went on to just four, but the miss fed England’s belief. Shan Masood put down a straightforward chance at mid-wicket when Dan Lawrence had 10, then redeemed himself later with a sharp run-out to remove Lawrence for 17.
The most telling lapse came from Mohammad Rizwan. Standing deep, as Pakistan’s keeper and slips often did all day, he failed to cling on when they needed him to. Edges dropped short, half-chances died in front of the cordon. It was a good day for the bowlers; it could have been a great one.
England Scrap Amid the Noise of a Troubled Week
England arrived at Lord’s with more than Pakistan to worry about. The Brydon Carse affair – another off-field drinking incident, another police investigation, this time into an alleged assault after a night out in Derby – dragged the spotlight away from Joe Root’s encouraging return as captain and back onto discipline.
Carse was removed from the Test squad and turned out for Durham instead. The message from the dressing room had to be that the cricket would speak louder.
It didn’t start that way. Gay’s dismissal, caught down the leg side, mixed misfortune with Pakistan’s persistence. Duckett followed in Abbas’ burst, then Root, so commanding at Headingley, nicked off cheaply for four after that early reprieve. In the gloom, England were 67-4 and wobbling.
Lawrence’s innings summed up the early chaos. Dropped on 10 by Masood, then run out for 17 by the same fielder, he never looked settled. Brook, eager to impose himself, drove once too many and saw his stumps shattered by Ali. Wasteful cricket in conditions that demanded discipline.
Yet under the pressure and the murmur of disapproval from the Lord’s pavilion, England found two men willing to dig in.
Smith and Cox Change the Mood
Jamie Smith has been searching for a defining innings in this series. Here, he found something close. From the moment he walked out, he looked more certain than those before him. Compact, positive without being reckless, he picked off anything even marginally overpitched and rode the bounce with a calm that belied the situation.
At the other end, Jordan Cox continued his quiet rise. Only his third Test, only his latest display of poise. Where others flirted with disaster, Cox tightened up, left well and waited. Together, Smith and Cox added 67 for the sixth wicket, the partnership that dragged England away from the brink and into something resembling contention.
They didn’t dominate; they endured. Every over felt like a small skirmish. A play-and-miss here, a thick edge short of the slips there. But they stayed. Smith’s half-century was not just “much-needed” for him, but for an England side desperate to show some steel amid the off-field noise. Cox, matching him stroke for stroke, looked every inch a long-term Test player.
When both fell – Smith bowled by Ali, Cox eventually undone – England risked squandering the platform they had fought so hard to build.
Gus Atkinson refused to let that happen. Coming in with the innings fraying, he played the kind of lower-order hand that can tilt a series. His unbeaten 34 was brisk, bold and crucial. He farmed the strike, trusted his eye and dragged the total towards something that felt, in these conditions, like a score you have to work hard to overhaul.
A Match Balanced on the Weather and the Nerves
By the time bad light finally snuffed out the day, England’s seamers must have been itching to get the new ball in their hands. Under those clouds, with that slope, they would have fancied tearing into Pakistan’s fragile top order before stumps. Instead, they were left waiting, Pakistan yet to bat, the contest paused rather than shaped.
The pitch itself is a very different surface to the one England exploited against New Zealand in June. This is no minefield. It offers assistance, not chaos. That makes 248-9 an awkward, nagging kind of total: not enough to relax with, but more than Pakistan can treat lightly, especially with more rain forecast across the next three days.
For Root, early signs in his second stint as captain are quietly promising. England’s batting, while flawed, showed more resilience than recklessness. For Babar, the sense is of a team that has finally arrived in this series, their seamers tuned to the conditions and their discipline restored – if not yet their catching.
So the arm wrestle continues. England have runs on the board. Pakistan have the chance to answer on a surface that still has plenty to say.
When Babar and his batters finally walk out, we will discover whether 248 was an escape act, or the first blow in a series-clinching victory.
