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Nasser Hussain said Pakistan discovered “the kryptonite to Bazball” after England were humbled in Rawalpindi. They lost in three days and by nine wickets after a calamitous collapse with their last seven wickets going for 46 runs.
With all 20 English wickets falling to spinners for the second game in succession, the former England captain said the home side had “exposed England when the ball spins” and demonstrated that “when it spins and when it’s gripping, England don’t play spin as well or bowl spin as well as Pakistan”.
Shan Masood, the Pakistan captain, said: “If you want to be one of the top teams in the world you have to learn to play in all conditions.”
Ben Stokes said Noman Ali and Sajid Khan, who came into the Pakistan team for the last two games and between them took 39 of the 40 English wickets to fall in them, “were obviously too good for our batting lineup”, and “we got thrown challenges and we weren’t able to stand up to them”.
The England captain also accepted that the pitch, unconventionally prepared using rakes, patio heaters and industrial fans, was not to blame for their failure, which unlike last week’s defeat in Multan came having won the toss. “In this game in particular, Pakistan just played better cricket for longer periods of time than we did,” he said.
Stokes talked about the difficulty of facing “high-quality bowlers who have grown up bowling on these types of surfaces … it’s something they’re very used to”. But Masood said that while it suited his players better, it was no more familiar to them than to their opponents.
“We haven’t played on these wickets in Pakistan, in our Test grounds,” he said. “So for us to come up with something with bat and ball and in the field and respond to conditions that were alien to us as well, that’s very heartening.”
England won a record-breaking first Test by an innings and 47 runs but after Pakistan changed their side and their pitches to prioritise spin they emphatically lost the next two. “The way to assess the last two games is that we got thrown challenges, and we weren’t able to stand up to those challenges for long enough to get the results we wanted,” Stokes said. “We did it for very small periods, but small periods in Test cricket isn’t long enough.”
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England will need to move on quickly. They play the first game of a white-ball tour of West Indies on Thursday and start a Test series in New Zealand – who on Saturday became the first side to win a series in India for 12 years – in just over a month.
“Whether you do well or not you should always try to take the positives,” Stokes said. “There have been some unbelievable individual performances throughout the series. A lot to take out. The only way is up.”