Last month as much rain fell on Bedfordshire as Multan has in a year. The city gets about 2mm in an average October, about an eighth of what fell in London on Wednesday. On the outskirts, such as the area around the cricket ground, donkeys and oxen haul carts and camels hide under trees from the searing afternoon sun.
There is nothing on the roads more eye-catching than the tractors and lorries, many of which are decorated with intricate and colourful paintwork and hung with shiny baubles. It is a hot, dry city, a place of working vehicles and beasts of burden, where it seems no characteristics are as important as stamina and reliability.
This is not a place to take risks with Ben Stokes’s hamstring. Instead, England see it as one to test precisely how much of a burden can be placed on a seam-bowling group that in most cases is experiencing these conditions for the first time.
Fewer than two years have passed since England’s last Test series in Pakistan, but they go into this one without the four seamers who played then: Jimmy Anderson has retired, Stokes and Mark Wood are injured and Ollie Robinson is out of favour. In their place, Chris Woakes plays his first Test in Asia for eight years, Gus Atkinson his first outside England and Brydon Carse his first full stop.
“It is really exciting for the lads to come out here and be exposed to these conditions for the first time,” said Stokes, who on Saturday confirmed his troublesome hamstring injury means he misses the first Test that starts on Monday.
“It will show them how hard Test cricket can be. It is tough anyway, but coming to the subcontinent in these temperatures it takes character and we have a lot of characters who will be willing to stand up to the challenge.
“There are no doubts in my mind about the bowlers we have picked. We know they will be able to withstand that heat. There will be no shying away from what Popey [stand-in captain Ollie Pope] asks them to do, even if it is hot and they are a bit tired, because that is what you do for the team.”
The general fervour for golf among the England squad is the subject of frequent derision but the hours spent on their hotel’s course, which the players have made liberal use of since their arrival on Tuesday, can only have helped their acclimatisation.
“The fact we’ve been out in the weather for the last four or five days and really tried to embrace it and get used to it has been a massive help,” Joe Root said.
Less helpful is that Anderson, who took eight wickets at an average of 18.50 in the two games he played here in 2022, has been too busy at a pro-am tournament at St Andrews (where, as he did 77 times in his Test career, he has been playing alongside a Yorkshireman named Bairstow, even if on this occasion it was not Jonny but the 26-year-old world No 233, Sam) to join the squad with which he continues to work as a bowling mentor. He is due to arrive on Tuesday.
In 2022, England bowled significantly more spin than seam but conditions for this series could be different, with Pakistan hinting that they intend to give their fast bowlers, led by the brilliant Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah, some extra assistance.
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“Speaking to Shan [Masood, the Pakistan captain] at the start of the summer when he was at Yorkshire, he sort of hinted at them having a brilliant seam attack and wanting to use that to their advantage a little bit more, so we’ll see what happens,” Root said.
Unhelpfully, the pitch to be used in the opening Test has been covered in tarpaulin for every minute England’s players have been at the ground, denying them the chance to learn anything more about it than the fact that it looks quite green at both ends. Running, as ever, towards the danger, they decided to announce their team on Saturday anyway.
Pakistan have had a shambolic buildup, most recently losing 2-0 at home to Bangladesh, and though Masood this week reported that “I have no complaints regarding unity”, those wounds are so fresh that the team might not be able to withstand too many blows before they start smarting once again.
On the other hand, it would take only a gentle improvement in the performances of a few key players – most obviously Babar Azam, the former captain, who having ended 2022 with a career average of 49.25 has in 15 innings since scored no more than 41 and averaged just 21.13 – to transform their prospects.
This, sensibly, is the Pakistan England are preparing for. “The class is there, we won’t be taking them lightly,” Root said. “We know it’s going to be tough.”
