Wisden
Tour review

Pakistan v England, 2011-12

John Etheridge

Test matches (3): Pakistan 3, England 0
One-day internationals (4): Pakistan 0, England 4
Twenty20 internationals (3): Pakistan 1, England 2


Saeed Ajmal races off in celebration of his third wicket, Pakistan v England, 2nd Test, Abu Dhabi, 2nd day, January 26, 2012
Saeed Ajmal didn't need a teesra to befuddle England's batsmen © Getty Images
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At the end of a tour of wild fluctuations, two whitewashes and apathy among many locals, England emerged with their win-loss ledger marginally in credit but their spirits decidedly in deficit. If a 4-0 victory in the one-day series came as a pleasant surprise, their 3-0 defeat in the Tests that preceded it was nothing less than calamitous. Based on all previous evidence and any semblance of logic, the results were the wrong way round, although England's 2-1 win in the Twenty20 games at least offered a fleeting adherence to the form guide.

Test cricket was supposedly England's strength. Yet for all three matches their batsmen were teased and tormented by Pakistan's spinners. They had no answer, and produced some of the worst statistics for England in any series they had ever played. Then, as soon as the 50-over contests began, England overwhelmed Pakistan with fast-bowling power and four centuries in four games, all from their openers; the 5-0 defeat in India before Christmas seemed like a bad dream. It was only England's third one-day series whitewash overseas against countries other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and their first in a series of more than three matches. And it was all very confusing.

England's exploits in Test cricket over the previous couple of years had been such that even a 3-0 defeat could not dislodge them from the top of the ICC rankings. Yet they knew they would never achieve their stated aim of becoming an all-time great Test team unless they improved in Asia.

The tone was set on the opening morning of the First Test, when England entered lunch at 52 for five, with Saeed Ajmal already three wickets into an eventual haul of seven. The batsmen looked undercooked and perhaps even complacent. Their warm-up games had not provided opposition of the highest quality; team director Andy Flower later admitted his side's preparation for the tour was not all it might have been. And they were certainly unable to read Ajmal's mixture of off-breaks and doosras. In the manner of Shane Warne, he had made pre-series boasts about another mystery ball - the teesra, or third one. There was little evidence of this new delivery - apart, possibly, from a ball sent down with an almost round-arm action. But his two favourite deliveries proved more than sufficient.

Ajmal finished the three Tests with 24 wickets, although his harvest was not completely unexpected: he had been recognised as the world's premier spin bowler before the start of the series. In many ways, Abdur Rehman's tally of 19 proved more damaging. A journeyman left-arm spinner, whose travels had included four club teams in England, Rehman superbly exploited both the uncertainty created by Ajmal at the other end and the tourists' near-paranoia about the Decision Review System.

England's nervous, tentative approach with the bat added up to some horrendous figures. The middle-order engine room of Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell - utterly flummoxed by Ajmal's doosra - and Eoin Morgan was routinely blown away. Pietersen finished with a total of 67 runs, Bell 51 and Morgan 82, and all three failed to reach 40 in any first-class innings. In all matches on tour, including warm-ups and limited-overs internationals, Morgan had a top score of 31 in 17 attempts. He was dropped for the tour of Sri Lanka soon after.

The top three fared little better. Andrew Strauss extended his sequence to 31 months with only one Test century; like him, Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott managed only one fifty each. England failed to register an individual century in a Test series for the first time since 1999, when they slumped to the bottom of the Wisden world rankings, and their average of 19 runs per wicket was their lowest in a three-match series since 1888, when Australia's new-ball pair of Charlie "Terror" Turner and J. J. Ferris were in their pomp.

Well though Ajmal and Rehman bowled, England batted as if petrified of a third, even more destructive, opponent. Let's call him Mr DRS. The days of spin bowlers looping the ball, landing it wide of the stumps and hoping for turn - with a bat-pad catch the most likely mode of dismissal - appeared to have changed forever, at least in Asian conditions. Instead, Ajmal and Rehman aimed at pace for the stumps, and allowed England's inadequacies and the review system to do the rest. A total of 43 batsmen fell lbw - the joint-most for a series of any length, let alone one of only three Tests.

The alarm England's batsmen inevitably felt about being struck on the pads quickly gave way to panic. This was with some justification, because umpires now seemed more prepared to give leg-before verdicts and, once the finger was up, the umpire's-call element of DRS in effect made the wicket four and a half stumps wide. England's concerns infiltrated their techniques and minds. Worried about using their pads, they seemed even more diffident about using their bats: 22 of their batsmen fell lbw, with Ajmal and Rehman claiming 19 between them - Ajmal seven in the First Test alone. The coaching maxim might have been: "You know that stick of wood in your hands? Well, use it!"

Pakistan encountered similar problems, and actually lost more batsmen lbw as the series progressed: three in the First Test, seven in the Second, and 11 in the Third. But while they too struggled against brisk left-arm spin - like Rehman, Monty Panesar won eight lbw appeals - they got into less of a tangle against Graeme Swann's orthodox off-breaks: he removed four batsmen leg before to Ajmal's 11. Crucially, in the Third Test, Azhar Ali and Younis Khan had the nous to buck the trend, scoring the only centuries of the series in a partnership of 216 during which they deftly kept their pads out of the way.

Thrashed by ten wickets in the First Test, England had good opportunities to win the next two. Indeed, they believed they should have won the series. After three days of disciplined cricket in Abu Dhabi, they faltered to 72 all out in pursuit of 145 for victory. Then, in the Third, England reduced Pakistan to 44 for seven on the first morning on their way to 99 all out, before they fought back to become the first team since 1907 to win a Test after being bowled out for fewer than 100 in the first innings of the game.

Crucial to it all was Ajmal, whose skills did not escape controversy. On the first day of the series - the first day, in fact, on which the teams had played each other since the jailing of three Pakistan players and their agent following the spot-fixing scandal at Lord's in 2010 - his action was called into question. Comments made on television by Bob Willis back in the UK were the catalyst, and there was a flurry of confusion later in the series, when Ajmal appeared to tell the BBC he had been granted permission to bend his arm by 23.5 degrees at the elbow, well outside the permitted 15. The ICC later said the quote had been a product of linguistic confusion, and released the results of scientific tests which showed the extent of Ajmal's flexion was in fact as low as seven degrees.

Although England coach Andy Flower privately harboured suspicions about Ajmal's action, there was a desire on both sides to quell any animosity lingering from the toxic 2010 series. And, in Misbah-ul-Haq - who had been left out of those Tests - Pakistan had a captain anxious not to reopen old wounds. He was calm and considered in everything he did, and apparently managed to unite the Pakistan dressing-room, a task beyond many of his predecessors. Misbah's only skewed judgment came when he was dismissed lbw five times out of five in the Tests, and referred the last four. The technology supported the umpire's verdict on each occasion.

While England's batsmen struggled, their bowlers were superb. Stuart Broad and James Anderson were miserly with new ball and old, drilling an off-stump line and extracting enough movement to trouble the Pakistanis. They had next to no support from other seamers. Chris Tremlett flew home for back surgery after the First Test, while Tim Bresnan - forced to return to the UK because the elbow problem on which he underwent an operation the previous November had not fully healed - missed the whole series, although he was able to come back for the one-day leg.

From the Second Test onwards England fielded two spinners, and Panesar - playing international cricket for the first time since he helped save the Ashes opener at Cardiff with the bat in July 2009 - ended with 14 wickets. He was usually the first spinner called on by Strauss and, in his two games, bowled 141 overs to Swann's 85. Swann ascribed this to the lack of left-handers in Pakistan's line-up. In truth, Panesar outbowled him.

England enjoyed many aspects of the tour - good hotels, top-notch facilities, no internal flights - but the cricket bug has yet to catch on in the UAE. Crowds were poor, with the Emiratis apparently uninterested, and Pakistani immigrants only occasionally willing or able to surrender a day's work to travel to grounds not serviced by public transport.

The Dubai Sports City Stadium was surrounded by half-constructed buildings on which the cranes had not moved for several years. It was like a scene from a post-apocalypse movie set. Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Zayed Stadium was in the middle of the desert, although the building work here, in the wealthiest of the Emirate states, was advancing fast. During the Tests, more than half of the crowd were normally Barmy Army members and assorted other England fans. Relocating matches to the UAE because of security concerns seemed an acceptable compromise for the Pakistan Cricket Board, but this was a home series only in the loosest sense.

When the one-day series started, Cook made centuries in the first two games and 80 in the third, while Pietersen reached three figures in the final two. He described his innings of 130, which ensured England's whitewash, as his finest in one-day cricket. The decision to promote him back to the opener's role he performed briefly in the 2011 World Cup - a switch made because of his poor returns at No. 4 and Flower's suspicion that he needed to refire Pietersen's appetite for 50-over cricket - was a huge success, and in stark contrast to his travails in the Tests. (The story, of course, would later develop a life of its own.)


Steve Finn appeal for the wicket of Mohammad Hafeez, Pakistan v England, 1st ODI, Abu Dhabi, February, 13, 2012
Pakistan's whitewash in the one-day series was their first bilateral defeat in the format since 2010 © Getty Images
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Just as influential was Steven Finn. He bowled fast and straight to collect 13 wickets in the four matches, including figures of four for 34 in each of the first two. The power of Finn and England's other bowlers was too much for a Pakistan side who had not lost any bilateral one-day series in 2011. England were able to rest a number of senior players for the final match and still win.

Cook advanced his standing as a leader, and his aggressive batting persuaded England to add him to the Twenty20 squad as cover because of minor injuries elsewhere, even if he was never seriously considered for a place in the starting team. Broad became England's third captain of the tour in the Twenty20 matches, and the management seemed happy to continue splitting the job - although the 50-over success under Cook had the unintended consequence of highlighting the Test losses under Strauss. Yet, for the time being at least, Strauss's position was under no serious threat.

England, the reigning world Twenty20 champions, secured the series by winning the final two matches after a careless defeat in the first. Younger players, such as Jonny Bairstow and Jade Dernbach, made useful contributions, although Pietersen and Swann were crucial too. By now, England were more used to the wiles of Pakistan's spin bowlers, and more at ease with fields that were less attacking than in the Tests. If the one-day series had come first, everything might have been different. And maybe even a little more logical.

Match reports for

Tour Match: ICC Combined Associate and Affiliate XI v England XI at ICCA Dubai, Jan 7-9, 2012
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Tour Match: Pakistan Cricket Board XI v England XI at ICCA Dubai, Jan 11-13, 2012
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1st Test: England v Pakistan at Dubai (DICS), Jan 17-19, 2012
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2nd Test: England v Pakistan at Abu Dhabi, Jan 25-28, 2012
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3rd Test: England v Pakistan at Dubai (DICS), Feb 3-6, 2012
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Tour Match: England XI v England Lions at Abu Dhabi, Feb 10, 2012
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1st ODI: England v Pakistan at Abu Dhabi, Feb 13, 2012
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2nd ODI: England v Pakistan at Abu Dhabi, Feb 15, 2012
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3rd ODI: England v Pakistan at Dubai (DICS), Feb 18, 2012
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4th ODI: England v Pakistan at Dubai (DICS), Feb 21, 2012
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1st T20I: England v Pakistan at Dubai (DICS), Feb 23, 2012
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2nd T20I: England v Pakistan at Dubai (DICS), Feb 25, 2012
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3rd T20I: England v Pakistan at Abu Dhabi, Feb 27, 2012
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© John Wisden & Co.