England's Ben Duckett hits ton before Pakistan's Sajid Khan triggers collapse
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Sajid Khan is a player who demands attention, a character whose moustache,
however eyecatching, is not half as flamboyant as his celebrations. As
England's innings imploded across a dramatic afternoon, and an old, tired
pitch that had held firm across nearly seven days of Test cricket finally
started to surrender, there were quite a few of those.

He is a man who could hardly be more theatrical if he donned a scarlet bowler
hat and started twirling a cane, and here he found a stage. The tourists
looked on course to comfortably match Pakistan's first-innings total of 366
until, as the day drew towards a close and with a ball showing the first signs
of old age, the spinners found some turn and course of the game took a twist.
At stumps England were six down and still 127 behind.

"We kind of knew what the pitch was going to do," said Ben Duckett. "If we'd
batted on that yesterday and there was only one seamer and it wasn't spinning
a great deal, things would have been very different. It's only going to get
harder, I think.

"We're in a position now where tomorrow morning's massive. We need to try to
win that first session, then we'll be in a good position in the game. I'd be
very surprised if it didn't just continue to spin more and more. Certainly
that fourth innings is going to be a bit tricky."

For a while this one did not seem to be. After 41 overs England stood at 210
for two; four overs later it was 225 for six and their ambitions had dipped as
rapidly and colourfully as the sun. Across the first two games of this series
England had scored 1,034 runs for nine wickets in 191 overs; suddenly they
lost four for 14 in 18 balls.

Joe Root was the first to fall and the most unfortunate, the ball diverting
into the stumps off an edge and a foot. Duckett, having scored 114 off 129,
tried to drive the same bowler and edged to Salman Agha at slip, and five
balls later Sajid got one to turn sharply past Harry Brook's bat and into
middle and leg. Two balls after that Ben Stokes edged Noman Ali into a pad and
the ball looped wide of Abdullah Shafique at short leg, who dived to take a
smart catch. From there Jamie Smith and Brydon Carse survived the last eight
overs under intense pressure.

None of that looked likely as Duckett raised his bat a little earlier, even if
it was a demonstration of the bowlers' rising control that it took him 22
balls, and the best part of nine nervy overs, to navigate through the 90s.
Still, his century was the eighth fastest scored by an England opener.

Duckett started England's innings, surprisingly, with a leave, and then
continued it, less surprisingly, with a succession of orthodox and reverse
sweeps. These, of course, are his speciality, and this was their moment. With
him in control England set off at a sprint, scoring 69 across their first 10
overs, all but one of which featured at least a single boundary.

Zak Crawley's time in the middle was shorter and more dramatic, and he
required a thick edge of luck to reach 27. He was on 20 and at the non-
striker's end when he launched himself down the wicket for what he alone
thought was a likely single off Sajid, and was nowhere near his crease when
the ball was returned to the bowler. But Sajid had allowed his left arm to
brush the stumps and dislodge the bails as he prepared to gather it,
surrendering a certain run-out and giving himself a chance to show that he can
emote desolation almost as well as joy.

Two overs later Crawley had to be called back by Duckett to review an lbw
decision which was duly overturned, but he scored only three more runs before
another review discovered an edge and ended his innings.

England's pace of scoring slowed after his departure, and when Noman Ali
bowled a maiden to Root in the first hour of the final session it was
Pakistan's first in 171 attempts across the two games. By then Ollie Pope had
been and gone, the 26-year-old looking comfortable until he suddenly wasn't,
and Sajid spun one past the bat and into the stumps.

From the start the day had, in more ways than one, an unusual, disconcerting
air, the action filtered for much of the time through a thick, creamy haze of
smog that never quite lifted even as the state of the game gradually became
clearer.

Pakistan's last five wickets added 107 to their overnight score, two of them
falling to the excellent Brydon Carse. He took two for just 15 runs in his
first 13 overs of the innings, and ended as England's most economical bowler
even though Aamer Jamal and Salman Agha besmirched his figures by taking 16
off his 16th.

He exacted a measure of revenge by extracting the former's middle stump with
the first ball after lunch to leave Pakistan nine down, and the final wicket
fell six overs later, Noman pulling a Jack Leach delivery to deep midwicket
where Carse, appropriately, was underneath it. Now England need him also to
excel with the bat.



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