England prepare to take on Pakistan in a decider third Test at Rawalpindi, but this time around the hosts think they have found the means to unravel Bazball: a spinning pitch.
Rawalpindi is traditionally among the flattest pitches in world cricket, and this England team scored 506 inside three sessions on the first day of the tour two years ago.
On that occasion, Jack Leach bowled England to victory in the fading December light as Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes claimed their first Test win overseas.
The 2024 tour started in much the same fashion. Pakistan wanted a green seaming pitch and England smashed more than 800 in an innings before the hosts collapsed in the second innings to hand stand-in captain Ollie Pope a first victory away from home.
Instead of allowing history to repeat itself, Pakistan took the unprecedented step of using the same pitch for the second Test, and this time it spun.
Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah made way for off-spinner Sajid Khan and slow left armer Noman Ali, and between them they claimed all 20 wickets in the second Multan Test as Pakistan won by 152 runs to level the series.
Captain Shan Masood has asked for more of the same, the heaters and fans were brought out to try and encourage the flat hard pitch to break up and entice the cracks.
The match itself may come down to who wins the toss if the surface can break up sufficiently, but should England lose the 50-50 decision, they will come up against a type of attack that the Bazballers have struggled with.
Under Stokes and McCullum, England have lost five Tests in a row on turning pitches, the final four in India in the spring, and the second at Multan.
Stokes has averaged just 15 with the bat in his last 11 innings in Asia and aside from Joe Root and Ben Duckett, the rest of the batters have not yet formulated a clear plan against spin.
England’s second problem will be their own spin attack. Shoaib Bashir has been nominated as the number one spinner, a role he took over when Leach was ruled out of the series against India with an injury sustained in the first Test. The two play for the same county where Leach remains the preferred choice and Bashir has been forced to go out on loan for playing time.
Bashir struggled in the first two Tests in Pakistan, taking six wickets at 51.16, and Rawalpindi can be an unforgiving deck. In 2022, home spinner Zahid Mahmood did take four wickets but went for over 235 runs in the first innings.
On that occasion, England went for the batting all-rounders, with Will Jacks claiming 6-161, and Leach a crucial three match wickets, although the seamers did the majority of the work.
Rehan Ahmed has been brought into the side with Gus Atkinson returning as the sole specialist seamer backed up by captain and all-rounder Stokes. Durham quicks Brydon Carse and Matthew Potts drop out of the XI.
While the pitch conditions are unlikely to be the same as they were in 2022, the England spinners will have to bowl a tight line and length on a pitch that was little more than punishment for bowlers two years ago.
The batters will need to come to terms with the prospect of facing the spin attack that bowled them out twice in the previous Test and confront one of the only hurdles in the format that Bazball has yet to overcome.
England XI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (captain), Jamie Smith, Gus Atkinson, Rehan Ahmed, Jack Leach, Shoaib Bashir.
