Pakistan take control at Lord’s
LONDON: It was the day Mohammad Amir stepped back out at Lord’s after six years of shame spent away from Test cricket, but it was another Pakistani bowler returning from suspension who turned the first Test on its head.
Yasir Shah’s three-month ban for taking a prohibited substance hardly bears comparison with a five-year spot-fixing punishment but how England, on 253/7, must wish it was him rather than Amir who had been kept away from Lord’s.
Yet if all the attention on the young offender had allowed Yasir to pass under the radar in the build-up to this Test, then the best leg-spinner in world cricket made his presence felt by shaking England out of their pre-series complacency.
Yasir took 5-64 to help Pakistan to a strong position on day two of the Test.
What a chastening match this is turning out to be for an England side who sent out all the wrong signals with a cautious and conservative selection that appeared to underestimate Pakistan’s chances of making an impact here.
And what a fight England now have to stop themselves from going one down in this four-Test series after being demolished by a leg-spinner who had so little to work with on a second-day Lord’s pitch devoid of turn and bounce.
Yasir had never played a Test outside Asia before this game but he quickly announced himself to an English audience as much more than a Lionel Messi lookalike who fell foul of authority for taking his wife’s blood-pressure medicine.
It had been looking good for England when Alastair Cook and Joe Root, back up to No 3, took them to 118-1 in reply to 339 all out, Amir struggling for swing and suffering from Pakistan’s fielding lapses.
But the moment Root tried to hit Yasir out of the attack, as Misbah-ul-Haq had swept Moeen Ali out of England’s, was when a home side made weaker by the leaving out of Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes began to implode.
There was logic behind Root’s determination not to allow Yasir to dictate to England but his execution was all wrong when he hit an attempted slog sweep straight up in the air. Cue a familiar English collapse against leg-spin.