HAVING won the first Test of the series at Lord’s quite convincingly, Pakistan seems to have slipped down the ladder quite drastically to a situation from where they are facing problems with both ball and bat to get back into the game and compete at equal level with hosts England.

Having been bitten twice at Old Trafford and at Edgbaston, they appear quite shy to strike back and clinch the initiative which they had wrested at the start of the four match series.

For England it was important to redeem themselves from the humiliation of a shock defeat in front of the home crowd at Lord’s. And they have surely done that in style by bouncing back to take 2-1 lead in the four-Test series.

In the second Test, Pakistan lost by a huge margin on a perfect batting surface. At Edgabston, Misbah-ul-Haq’s men, having taken control of the game for nearly three and a half days, squandered the opportunity by not only batting poorly but also giving away too many runs in the last session of the fourth day through ill-directed bowling and poor field placings to allow Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali to take charge.

At tea time on the final day of the third Test, Geoffrey Boycott told me, “Test matches are saved and won through sensible batting and Pakistan except for youngster Sami Aslam were not able to show kind of grit that was required.”

In victory or in defeat it is important though to remain magnanimous. Misbah and his men realize fairly well that their failure to control the series and to maintain the much needed lead has lot to do with their own doing and that is because of inconsistency and successive failures of their experienced batsmen.

It was not surprising then for him to show his concern about the factors that has so far caused his team’s inability to rise to the occasion.

However, he did show his concern about the behavior of the ball on the final afternoon as England bowlers made inroads to destroy Pakistan’s technically inept batsmen. “James Anderson, Chris Broad are experienced bowlers and they look after the ball which is what reverse swing is all about,” Misbah said yesterday.

Later, when the ball tampering allegation was mentioned to England captain Alistair Cook, he laughed and dismissed the notion as a ‘load of rubbish.’

And I do agree with him.

I personally, however, feel that Pakistan batsmen’s failure to improve on their skills has always been the cause of their disappointing performance in places like England and Australia. Like so many sides in the past, this Pakistan batting line-up too cannot be trusted for consistency.

The continued failure of Mohammad Hafeez and Younis Khan is definitely hurting the team the most. I will not be surprised if Hafeez is omitted from the final Test eleven to allow Azhar Ali to open the batting with Sami Aslam which might give an opportunity to young Iftikhar Ahmed to come into the middle order.

This indeed is a ‘do or die’ match as Misbah said yesterday. A draw is not an option if Pakistan has to finish the series with honours even.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2016