Pakistan v England: men’s tri-series cricket ODI – live
9th over: Pakistan 34-2 (Babar Azam 25, Saad Baig 0) Jacks continues, so he wasn’t just a ploy for the quicks to swap round… and again he does well. This partnership is spoiling us: 19 balls used up, three runs scored.
8th over: Pakistan 33-2 (Babar Azam 24, Saad Baig 0) Brook takes Baker off, wicket or no wicket, to allow Gus Atkinson to change ends, which may explain why Jacks got that early go. Just a single off this over too: Babar seems to be back to form.
7th over: Pakistan 32-2 (Babar Azam 23, Saad Baig 0) Brook makes his first bowling change and springs a surprise by turning to Will Jacks’ off-breaks, rather than Sam Curran’s slow-ball allsorts. Jacks is on the money, conceding only a single.
That England team in full: Duckett, Banton, Root, Brook, Cox (wkt), Curran, Jacks, Overton, Atkinson, Rashid, Baker. No Jofra Archer as he’s been rested for this tour, and rightly so after a hectic year.
6th over: Pakistan 31-2 (Babar Azam 22, Saad Baig 0) Saim had just hit Baker for four – but only off the edge, through a vacant cordon. Harry Brook brings a slip in for the new batter’s first ball. Baker has been expensive (3-0-20-1) but, as usual, he’s made things happen.
Saim tries to flick Sonny Baker for six and sends the ball into the ether instead. Sam Curran does well to keep calm and cling on.
5th over: Pakistan 26-1 (Babar Azam 21, Saim Ayub 4) So sorry for the delay – nobody’s fault but mine. England didn’t help by taking a wicket with their first ball, as Gus Atkinson lured Fakhar Zaman into a loose clip to Joe Root at midwicket. That prompted Babar Azam to change the habit of a lifetime and get off to a quick start.
Morning everyone. Or should that be welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends? Three weeks and two days after the last hurrah of the international summer, England are in action on the first of their five winter tours.
That day at the Oval, England were unstoppable, piling up 355 and then bowling Sri Lanka out for 132, which was barely any more than Tom Banton had made off his own bat. Will Banton, Harry Brook, Jordan Cox, Gus Atkinson and Liam Dawson still be in top form now? It’s anyone’s guess. In cricket, the picture can change in the space of a drinks break.
England have some momentum under Harry Brook and Brendon McCullum after beating India as well as Sri Lanka in the summer. But Brook’s record as an ODI captain away from home is modest: won 2, lost 4. And Pakistan started this tri-series with a win on Sunday, as Salman Agha continued his soap opera by making a hundred and the Sri Lankan tail wilted in the face of Pakistan’s fast bowlers. That game, like this one, was in Rawalpindi, which tends to offer pace and bounce.
England have played only three ODIs in Pakistan in the past 21 years – all early last year, all in the Champions Trophy, and all ending in defeat. The last time they met Pakistan in a 50-over game on Pakistani soil was at Rawalpindi in 2005, when England, captained by Marcus Trescothick, won a low-scoring tussle by six runs, thanks to four wickets from Jimmy Anderson and three from Ian Blackwell. England’s other spinner on that occasion was Shaun Udal. It would be another four years before they called up Adil Rashid, who now seems to have been there forever.
This is a day-nighter with play starting at 2pm in Rawalpindi, 10am BST. I’ll be back with the toss and the teams 25 minutes before that. In the meantime, here’s a perceptive series preview from Taha Hashim.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.