Usman rues Pakistan bowling lapses despite five-wicket haul

Ali Usman may have finished the day with his first Test five-wicket haul, but it wasn't a moment circumstances permitted him to savour. His late success came well after England had assumed an imposing - and perhaps impregnable - position in the game. The hosts lead by 195 runs, and still have two wickets in hand to add to that tally.

Usman acknowledged Pakistan had let England score "too many runs" and was willing to shoulder part of the blame in what he considered a collective bowling failure. "Our bowling was not up to standard today, including myself. I took five wickets but we've given away too many runs as a bowling unit. We'll work on our mistakes and try not to repeat them."

Pakistan had excellent bowling conditions in the first hour once play began. With rain wiping out the first session and a half, the players took to the field under dark grey skies, supported heavily by the artificial light. The ball nipped around when Pakistan managed to land it correctly, with a number of plays and misses early on. However, they did not maintain those lines consistently, allowing Joe Root and Jordan Cox to turn a budding overnight partnership into a commanding 150-run stand.

Once introduced, though, Usman did offer some control, even if he fell away during parts of the day. Towards the end, though, he felt he was finding some assistance from the wicket, and in the final half-hour, he capitalized on it.

Dan Lawrence miscued a sweep straight up into the air, while Harry Brook got himself into an awkward position going deep into his crease and letting the ball sneak past him onto his stumps. It was a wicket Usman was particularly pleased by - especially given Brook's phenomenal record against Pakistan; he averages 84.72 against this opposition, and has scored more runs against them than any other side.

"I wanted to bowl within the stumps," Usman said. "If they got even a bit of room, they were scoring runs. Dan Lawrence was struggling a bit against spin. But Harry Brook uses his feet very well, so he was harder to bowl to. That's how I ended up taking the wicket I did."

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With the light fading in the extra half hour, Usman inflicted another quick double-blow, trapping Gus Atkinson in front before beating Ollie Robinson's outside edge with his best delivery of the game. It gave him a five-wicket haul, the first for a visiting spinner at Headingley since 1972.

"Today, when I started bowling, it felt like the ball was gripping. It made me think there was something in it for the spinner. I tried to hit the right areas and that's where I got wickets."

Usman refused to write the game off as a lost cause, saying the pitch was bringing spin into the game more as it slowed. While Pakistan have Usman to rely on, England are not playing a specialist spinner, depending solely on Lawrence if required.

"I think day-by-day the wicket is slowing down," Usman said. "It's slow already, it's not especially fast, but on the next three days it's going to take a lot more turn."

To take it anywhere near as far as that, though, he acknowledged Pakistan would have to have a near-perfect time with the bat once they get on tomorrow.

"In the batting, we'll try to take it as deep as possible and score as many runs as we can. "Our approach should be positive with the bat. We need to take it session by session. Anything can happen. We're positive as a batting unit. We've scored runs in the West Indies and the warm-up game. Our batters are in form, so we hope they do well and we're able to salvage this match."

Danyal Rasool is Cricinfo's Pakistan correspondent. @Danny61000

England 366 for 8 (Brook 91, Cox 73, Root 66, Lawrence 51, Usman 5-92) lead Pakistan 171 (Tongue 5-46, Robinson 5-51) by 195 runs

There's been plenty gloom already in England's Test summer, and so it was fitting, on a rain-delayed second day at Headingley, that their batters' attempts to bring their own glimmers of sunshine ended in mild anticlimax across the board, and that it was an otherwise up-against-it Pakistani, the left-arm spinner Ali Usman, who was the happiest performer by the close.

Harry Brook top-scored with 91 from 93 balls - an innings, despite its appearance on the scorecard, as measured as any he's produced of late. Ultimately, however, it culminated in his second failed bid for a home-ground hundred in consecutive Headingley Tests, following his 99 against India last summer. Instead, Usman skidded an arm-ball through his defences, en route to figures of 5 for 92, his maiden Test five-for - and remarkably the first by a visiting spinner since Ashley Mallett in the 1972 Ashes.

Similarly, Brook's fellow Yorkshireman Joe Root - with his England shirt No.66 - marked his 66th Test as England captain with an innings of 66 that looked, until the moment it ended, as though it was set to culminate in Test century No. 42. Instead, he had to settle for a share of Sachin Tendulkar's record of 68 scores between 50 and 99 - a fittingly imperfect milestone for a flawed day's cricket.

At the opposite end of the experience spectrum, the newer recruits of the post-Ben Stokes line-up, Jordan Cox and Dan Lawrence, adhered to the template with scores of 73 and 51 - excellent efforts in their own right but each tinged with regret at opportunities squandered. Both fell to Usman, Lawrence to a wild top-edged slog-sweep that was England's most attacking dismissal of the day. And after breaching Brook's defences, Usman followed up with two more in two balls late on to claw back some respectability for his team.

By the close of a 57-over day, however, England had still eased along to 366 for 8, a lead of 195. With the floodlights in operation throughout, they progressed at a run-rate of 4.46 that in no way paled compared to the hyperdrive antics of the ancien régime, although this time they owed their fast pace more to Pakistan's wayward seamers than to any overt efforts to push the agenda. Four-balls were two-a-penny, and lives were in plentiful supply too - most culpably an early let-off for Brook, who had made just 1 when he flinched a regulation chance to the Pakistan captain, Salman Agha, at second slip, who bloodied his finger in the process.

By the time that opportunity had gone begging, so too had Pakistan's realistic hopes of staying in the contest. A wicket at that moment would have capped a collapse of 3 for 7 in 14 balls, and left England tottering at 205 for 5, with Cox and Root having already fallen in consecutive overs after a third-wicket stand of 150. Instead, the let-off was perhaps the jolt that Brook needed to knuckle down and extend an extraordinary record against Pakistan that had already gleaned four centuries (including a triple) in six previous away Tests.

Certainly, the mania of Brook's recent Test displays was very much on the back-burner - he achieved haste without speed, as he reached a 55-ball fifty with no inside-out drives over the covers or preemptive scoop shots, such as the one that had left New Zealand's fielders so gobsmacked during their series clincher at Trent Bridge in June.

But in truth, there weren't a whole lot of pointers to take from an uninspiring attack, in which Usman's excellence was Pakistan's sole redeeming feature.

England had already been sitting pretty on 112 for 2 when, after more than three hours of rain-watching, play resumed at 2.45pm. There was early assistance for Pakistan's seamers in the juiced-up conditions, never more lavishly than when Khurram Shahzad hooped his first ball of the resumption all the way around Root's expansive drive. But consistency proved harder to come by, and Khurram's third over was dispatched for 17 runs, including four fours on both sides of the wicket from a gratefully free-flowing Cox.

Mohammad Abbas was the likeliest exception to that rule, but after a brace of maidens with the keeper up to the stumps, even he started to lose his line and rhythm. Cox capitalised with two more boundaries as Abbas' hunt for inswing went awry, including a firm flick off the pads to notch his maiden Test half-century, from 78 balls.

Just as England's pair of first-innings five-fors had come from consecutive deliveries, so Root followed suit one ball later when he worked Mohammad Ali off his toes for his own fifty. But when Usman entered the attack after the day's first drinks break, he served notice of his threat by beating Root with a second-ball ripper that appeared to go through the top.

But that pressure, however, was again squandered when Khurram, with his first ball back at the Football Stand End, spilled a toe-ended return catch to hand Cox a life on 57. As if that wasn't bad enough, he then repeated his half-tracker approach for three more boundaries in another expensive over.

With Cox's maiden century looming into sight, however, Usman found more purchase from round the wicket, and the batter followed the turn with a limp back-foot push. Neither keeper nor bowler appealed with any great intent, and though umpire Chris Gaffaney immediately raised his finger, Cox burned a review amid the confusion. His misuse, however, wasn't remotely as culpable as Root's one over later. Khurram speared in a fuller length, Root toppled across his leg glance, and was still looking baffled as he traipsed from the field with three reds on the big-screen replay.

A better-drilled Pakistan team might have seized its chance, with two fresh batters at the crease and the lead a not-yet-daunting 31. Instead, Brook's early chance, off Khurram, went begging, and Pakistan's challenge dissolved like Headingley's cardboard trays of beers, which caused plenty amusement on the big screen as they also went down with alarming frequency. Usman aside, no-one really had the gumption to do any mopping-up.