The past two Tests have demonstrated one of the home team’s prerogatives: to shape the conditions in which the match is played. When England reached Multan in the first Test, Pakistan could scarcely have been more accommodating hosts had they given each opponent a box of chocolates. England amassed 823 for seven declared and crushed the hosts by an innings, extending Pakistan’s streak of consecutive defeats to six.
At which point, Pakistan faced a choice. Continue to prepare such inviting wickets, as they had done when England won 3-0 in 2022? Or maximise their chances of winning, even if doing so would invite accusations of skulduggery? Anyone who cares about the integrity of Test cricket should be heartened by the approach that Pakistan embraced.
The two emphatic victories – first by 152 runs, and then by nine wickets – that followed should not obscure what a high-stakes game Pakistan played. Nor should it obscure the brilliance of Khan and Ali. The pair did not just outbowl England’s spin twins; they did so in a way that suggested that Pakistan might have stumbled upon a new template for how to play at home. Of course, the approach brought some risk; batting second in Multan might have been fatal, though losing the toss was no encumbrance to Pakistan in Rawalpindi. Yet, after their abject run of 11 consecutive home Tests without a win, a more conventional pitch was altogether more perilous for Pakistan.
England have often faced similar dilemmas themselves. In both 1953 and 2009, England arrived at The Oval needing to win the final Test of the series to regain the Ashes. On both occasions, Australia misread conditions, failing to pick a specialist spinner and surrendering the urn amid murmurs of pitch doctoring. Similar complaints were made as, succumbing to a green-tinged wicket and a Dukes ball offering appreciable swing and seam, Australia were skittled for 136 and 60 in consecutive first innings in the 2015 Ashes. “That’s the beauty of home conditions isn’t it, you can prepare a pitch to hopefully suit the home side,” Alastair Cook said in 2010. “That is what home advantage is and you’d expect everyone to do it.”
Over the past two Tests, Pakistan have merely become the latest example of this eternal truth. Of course, pitches should be monitored; the International Cricket Council ranks pitches on a six-point rating system, from very good to unfit. Most importantly, pitches should not be dangerous to batsmen; the only danger to Englishmen in Rawalpindi was to their egos, not their limbs.
Pitches, too, should offer a relatively even contest between bat and ball. In the second Test in Multan, Kamran Ghulam and Ben Duckett scored centuries. In Rawalpindi, Saud Shakeel hit another hundred; Jamie Smith came within 11 runs of scoring one himself; Pakistan’s last three wickets added 167 runs in their first innings. These wickets, then, offered a far more even contest between bat and ball – and more compelling cricket – than sterile pitches like that in the first Test or on Australia’s 2022 visit to Rawalpindi, which produced 14 wickets across five days. And if England’s seamers might long for conditions that offer them more assistance, they will soon find them: on next month’s tour to New Zealand.
From the abrasiveness of Rawalpindi to the green-tinged pitch that they can expect in Christchurch, England will encounter almost the full spectrum of the sport’s conditions in consecutive Tests. That is how it should be: a game without such variety of pitches would be diminished. The enduring challenge of Test cricket remains: to become a rare team who can master them all. England are still a long way from belonging in such company.
