England hoping pitch poser plays into their hands

The England camp were taken aback when they first heard of Pakistan’s plan to stage the second Test in Multan on the same strip as the first. The ploy has been designed to bring Pakistan’s spinners into play, but among its unintended consequences is that it has enabled Ben Stokes to return from his injury earlier than he might have been able to.

It is rare for the same venue to stage back-to-back Tests, and using the same pitch twice in a row is believed to be unprecedented. James Anderson, England’s fast-bowling consultant, thought it would be outlawed by the ICC, but their regulations only stipulate that the host board and ground authority must prepare the “best possible pitch”.

Stokes was one of six England players to train on Sunday, and has put himself through “quite a lot of high-intensity stuff” in the past two days as he prepares to return from his torn hamstring. The pitch was heavily watered after the first Test and has since been dried out by a combination of two industrial-sized fans and the harsh Multan sun.

“I’ve never seen a used pitch before, used in back-to-back games – and I’ve never seen fans that big standing as umpires,” Stokes joked on Monday. “You’d like to think it’s going to offer the spinners a bit more than it did last week with it being used and hot. It’s a slightly drier square, so you might see a little more reverse-swing to bring seamers into the game… Hopefully, we win the toss and bat.”

Pakistan have endured a turbulent few days even by their own standards, after their innings loss last week extended their streak of consecutive Test defeats to six. They have revamped their selection panel and made five changes to a 16-man squad which included the omissions of perhaps their three most high-profile players in Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah.

Around 90 minutes after Stokes spoke on Monday, Pakistan announced a team featuring three frontline spinners – despite the fact Abrar Ahmed, their first-choice legspinner, is in hospital with dengue fever – and only one seam option, in the allrounder Aamer Jamal. Azhar Mahmood, their assistant coach, said they had decided this was the best way to take 20 wickets.

“We thought about how we’re going to take those,” Mahmood said. “We thought that if we use that pitch [again], the thinking was, ‘How do we take 20 wickets against England?’ And we thought spin was the way to do it… We want the ball to turn. We felt we could have the home advantage. Let’s see if it works to our advantage or not. Time will tell.”

England have named two frontline spinners to Pakistan’s three, with Jack Leach partnering Shoaib Bashir and Joe Root offering a part-time option. But the expectation that the used surface will favour spin has enabled Stokes to make his comeback: he pledged to be “sensible” with his bowling workload but revealed he would not have played as a specialist batter.

“Playing on a used wicket made the decision a little bit easier,” Stokes said. “I’m available to bowl and when I sense the time is right for me to come on and make an impact, there won’t be any doubts in my mind that I can come on and bowl. You’d like to think it might be a bit more in favour of the spin, hence playing on a used pitch made the decision a little bit easier.”

Stokes’ knee injury limited him to five overs across England’s 4-1 series defeat in India at the start of this year, when they only selected four frontline bowling options per Test. He conceded that he could not work out a way of playing as a batter in Pakistan without compromising England’s attack: “I’d written a few teams down with me not bowling, and it just didn’t work.”

While Stokes was evidently surprised that Pakistan had decided to use the same pitch again, he encouraged his team to “play what’s in front of us”. Root, meanwhile, said the surface was “clearly not going to produce the same kind of game” and that it was “very likely” to offer more assistance for bowlers: “It can’t be any flatter than it was last week.”

And Stokes suggested that Pakistan’s ploy was a legitimate use of home advantage. “If we went 1-0 down at home, we would probably be going to our groundsman at the second Test [venue] saying, ‘Can we have a bit more of this, bit more of that?’ to use our home advantage in our favour,” he said.

“If you look at the way that first Test played out, if another wicket like that was produced, maybe that gives us more of an advantage, just because of the way that we take the game on. Using a used pitch brings a lot more into the game for both teams, actually – so if it does spin more, if it does reverse more, there’s more options there for both teams. It could be a tactic. I’m not sure.”