Pakistan arrived in England searching for stability at the top. They leave with one of the bleakest opening returns in their Test history.
Across six innings in the three-match series, Pakistan’s openers scraped together just 20 runs in total – their joint-worst effort in 35 years and their lowest aggregate for a series since the 1990-91 home campaign against West Indies. Every new pairing brought a fresh start on the team sheet, but the same grim pattern on the scoreboard.
Three pairs, no platform
The revolving door at the top of the order never stopped. Pakistan used three different opening combinations, and not one of them managed a stand in double figures.
Six innings. Twenty runs. A highest partnership of eight.
Each time the openers walked out, the innings felt one ball away from crisis. That sense of fragility finally turned into farce in the third Test at Edgbaston, where the second-innings openers failed to register a single run between them. Two wickets, no addition to the total, and the middle order exposed before it had even taken guard.
Awais stands alone
Amid the wreckage, Azan Awais was the lone figure trying to hold the line. The young left-hander, still learning the rhythms of Test cricket, cobbled together 129 runs in six innings at an average of 21.50 – modest numbers on paper, but almost heroic in context.
He rarely had company. Imam-ul-Haq produced 42 in one innings and then a duck in the other. Shan Masood’s returns of 1 and 26 did little to change the mood. Saim Ayub’s brief audition at the top ended brutally: 0 and 0.
Every early breakthrough for England felt inevitable. Every walk to the crease for Pakistan’s No.3 and No.4 felt premature. The middle order spent the series firefighting, usually before the shine had gone from the new ball.
Edgbaston collapse deepens the gloom
The failings up top were only one strand of a wider batting collapse that reached its nadir at Edgbaston. In the first innings of the third Test, Pakistan folded for 133. The most damning detail came from the scorecard’s top line: all of the top five dismissed for single-digit scores.
No team had ever lost its first five wickets for single figures in the first innings of a Test in England. Pakistan now own that unwanted slice of history.
This was not just a bad tour for the openers; it was a structural failure. The top order did not bend under pressure – it broke. And until Pakistan find an opening pair that can survive the first spell and set a platform, every away series in testing conditions will carry the same question: who is going to face the music when the new ball starts swinging?
