CRICKET TEST MATCH: Venue:Trent Bridge First ball: 11am On TV: Sky Sports 1
THE REBUILDING of Pakistan cricket continues at Trent Bridge today. To facilitate this, the ICC has given them as punishing a schedule of Tests as any side can have undertaken, with six matches crammed into seven weeks, two “home” and four away (which, of course, amounts to one and the same thing at present).
The series against Australia, just completed, was emotionally draining, particularly the dramatic second game at Headingley with the nerve-racking climax. Four matches now against a pretty good England side in English conditions may just prove too much: by the end, the bowlers, led by the remarkable teenager Mohammad Aamer, will be spent.
For now, though, there is much to anticipate, not least the prospect of how England’s batsmen, vying still for a place in the XI that will take the field in Brisbane four months hence, perform. Given a Dukes ball and a ground with a reputation for helping swing bowling, Pakistan’s attack must constitute the most challenging that could be assembled by any country.
Against that there is the counter-equation of how Pakistan’s inexperienced batting line-up, shorn now permanently, it seems, in pursuit of team harmony of Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf, will cope with the England bowlers.
Two of them, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, can swing the ball in the right conditions and one, Steven Finn, can gain the sort of bounce that Steve Harmison once used so disconcertingly.
The Tests against Australia may not be a huge guide to how the batting will fare in the coming weeks. Both games were so dominated by the seam bowlers that neither side managed a century between them.
Pakistan’s only half-centuries came from the new captain, Salman Butt, who held things together at Lord’s with 63 and 92, his opening partner Imran Farhat, who made 67 at Headingley, and the novice Azhar Ali, who made 51 there at No 3.
Unless former captain Shoaib Malik moves up the order from six to lend some experience, the engine room of the middle order has a total of 12 Tests, of which Umar Akmal has played eight.
Ali and Umar Amin were debutants in that series. It is hard, therefore, to pitch the batting as it stands as any better than that of Bangladesh, whom England faced back in sappy May and early June.
The bowling, though, is another issue entirely. Aamer is startlingly good. He is waspish in pace with a quick arm and has the priceless capacity to swing the ball into the pads of the right-handers as his natural delivery, the one slanting across his alternative.
It means that England’s left-handers, particularly Andrew Strauss, who prefers the freedom of the ball angling away when facing right-arm bowlers, will not get the width they crave. Nor will Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen, who have a tendency to fall across their stumps, find the inswing easy to cope with.
Alongside Aamer comes Mohammad Asif, a slinky bowler, accurate with it, who ghosts the ball this way and that from a high arm that refuses to telegraph his intentions. Finally there is Umar Gul, one of the finest “death” bowlers in one-day cricket and an excellent third seamer, the only proviso being his stamina to last the course. Even by the end of the second Australia Test, he looked on his knees.
England will probably pursue the policy of six batsmen and four main bowlers that they are almost certain to carry into the Ashes series, if not further. It will be a starting point and no more: Andy Flower, the coach, will cut the coat according to the cloth.
That Graeme Swann can bowl in all conditions and circumstance makes a massive difference. But in the absence of Ian Bell through injury, there is now an opportunity to see further whether Trott can put to bed the notion that he might be temperamentally fragile when put under the cosh, and whether young Dubliner Eoin Morgan has the aptitude and technique for Test cricket that he has in abundance in the shorter forms of the game.
There is a subtext beyond this pair, though, which demands more from Alastair Cook, now that he has got away from the relative freedom of the Bangladesh attack, Pietersen, who last made a century in Port of Spain 21 innings ago, and indeed Paul Collingwood, who missed the home series against Bangladesh and needs to pick up the threads once more.
Only Strauss, who recently has been playing brilliantly at times, is exempt from scrutiny.
Guardian Service
