Posts Categorised: Pakistan

0Points to Ponder After Opening Loss

One test in, Eng­land are one-nil down. Well done Pakistan
Hav­ing brushed Sri Lanka aside Eng­land are in the midst of a much stern­er test against an in-form Pakistan. And the vis­it­ors suc­ceeded where many oth­ers have failed of late, i.e. to expose England’s weaknesses.
Per­haps England’s main weak­ness is a lack of top qual­ity spin­ner. Moeen Ali is use­ful for a good few overs and tends to sur­prise many bats­men and trick them into a false sense of secur­ity. He is, how­ever, a second spin­ner. If he couldn’t bat would he be in the side? Very unlikely. He’s a backup option, not lead the attack mater­i­al. How and why Eng­land have chosen to ignore Adil Rashid amazes me. Over the dec­ades Eng­lish select­ors have shown a reluct­ance to pig leg-spin­ners and Rashid is seen as sus­cept­ible of leak­ing a few runs – but he has proven in ODIs and T20s that he is able to keep it tight. Thank­fully they have at least indic­ated they are will­ing to put this right by nam­ing him in the 13 man squad for the second test. They must pick him – espe­cially as Old Traf­ford tends to offer encour­age­ment to the twirlers. Eng­land have a bit of a selec­tion dilemma on their hands – I sus­pect Ben Stokes and Moeen are fight­ing it out for one place.
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