CRICKET/England v Pakistan: It can no longer be said that, when push comes to shove, England do not know how to win matches, but they found themselves up against it last night as they embarked on chasing a target of 198 runs to win the first Test.
Shoaib Akhtar bowled with great rapidity but it was Shabbir Ahmed, the seamer whose action was cleared only last month by the International Cricket Council, who sent Pakistan from the field in good heart when Marcus Trescothick, England's captain and all but double centurion of the first innings, dragged a widish ball on to his stumps when he had made only five. Bowled from round the wicket, the ball may have kept a fraction low - a sign of a wearing pitch and widening cracks - and the left-hander jabbed his bat at it.
Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell survived to the close, not without alarm and, in Bell's case, a little too much hyperactivity for comfort as he top-edged Shoaib for six and then lured his partner into setting off for a run that was not there. Strauss was a goner had Mohammad Sami succeeded with his shy at the stumps. Shortly afterwards the two left the field with England, 24 for one, needing 174 more and knowing the game was in the balance.
Pakistan hit England hard yesterday and it took another heroic performance from the pacemen armed with the second new ball to restore their position in the match. By the time it was due the young opener Salman Butt had reached the second hundred of his career, Inzamam-ul-Haq was easing his way nicely towards one of his own and the pair had a century stand behind them.
Bowlers need to treat the new ball with reverence in these parts. In no time the shine is gone and with it the hardness. To waste its potency is a cricketing crime, but from Matthew Hoggard came the blow that may have changed the course of the match. Hoggard looks to swing the ball away from the right-hander and, later in the over, he succeeded. However, his second ball for some reason held its line and even dipped in.
Inzamam, who for most of the day had been settling into his strokes as if he had been plopping into his favourite armchair, made a complete misjudgment, shouldered arms and paid the lbw penalty. If England's first reaction was to compliment the bowler for some inspired hoodwinking, in truth it was a bit of a fluke. Inzamam had made 72, the fourth-wicket stand worth 135.
No matter for England, the breach had been made, and through it stormed Andrew Flintoff, pounding out his best match figures in Tests of eight for 156, and Steve Harmison, who picked up a couple of late wickets to add to one the previous evening and gather more of the spoils than the faithful Hoggard.
It was Hoggard, though, who claimed the other big wicket, when Butt's innings was finally ended at a time when it seemed he might be destined to carry his bat. For almost eight hours Butt had been flicking out his drives through the off side as if he were a lizard catching insects with his tongue. But areas of strength can all too readily turn into weakness, and Hoggard exploited it. Another delivery was sent out wide of off stump, once more the blade flickered out, but this time the ball took the edge and Geraint Jones the catch.
Twice now the England pace attack has responded superbly in conditions that might deter those with less fortitude, the trio - Hoggard and Flintoff, now established it seems as the new-ball pairing, and Harmison - between them making up admirably for the absence of Simon Jones.
The worries for Trescothick in this game - and for Michael Vaughan when he returns - are, first, the manner in which the seamers have outbowled the spinners and, second, that Shaun Udal has looked steadier than Ashley Giles.
Five years ago the left-armer Giles was Nasser Hussain's leading wicket-taker in a tight series and now, older, wiser, better and more confident, he is expected to play a big part again. In this match, though, he has struggled to find his rhythm, unable to gauge the pace of the pitch and losing his accuracy: there have been more full tosses from him in this game than in the whole of last summer.
The absence of decent match practice on the green tops of Rawalpindi and Lahore will have had a bearing and this game will have done no harm if he is to revert to type for Faisalabad. The wicket he collected yesterday, thanks to Bell's remarkable reflex catch at silly point, was a bonus.
So was Kevin Pietersen's pouching of Kamran Akmal's top-edged hook at square leg off Harmison to end the Pakistan innings. Much less spectacular than Bell's effort, it was still greeted with great glee by his team-mates - it was his first catch in Test cricket, after previously putting down six in a row.
Guardian Service
