ENG vs PAK, 2nd Test — Day 1 Stumps: England 248/9 in 56 Overs, Abbas Takes 4-56 at Lord's

There is a version of Test cricket at Lord's that has almost disappeared from the modern English summer, and Pakistan played it on Thursday: four seamers, a full length, the slope used as a weapon rather than an inconvenience, and the patience to let the ground do the rest. It produced nine wickets. It also produced 248 runs in 56 overs, because the side on the other end of it does not know how to bat any other way, and that combination — hostile bowling, headlong batting, a day shortened at both ends by weather and light — is why nobody left Lord's on the first evening knowing who was ahead.

Babar Azam, back in the XI and back as captain after missing Headingley with a finger injury, won the toss and bowled. It was the obvious call and it looked inspired inside eleven overs. England were 36 for 3. Mohammad Abbas had all three.

Mohammad Abbas is 36, has never bowled quickly, and on a Lord's morning with cloud overhead and moisture underneath is arguably the most difficult bowler in the world to face. He had Emilio Gay caught behind for 8 in the fifth over. He trapped Ben Duckett lbw for 17 in the seventh — Pakistan reviewed, the decision was overturned, and two balls later they reviewed again for Joe Root and lost it. Root survived that appeal by three overs; Abbas got him lbw for 4 in the eleventh anyway. Three wickets, eleven overs into a Test match, all of them top order. Somewhere in that spell he passed 900 first-class wickets, a milestone that belongs to a different era of the game and to a bowler who has spent his career being described as unfashionable by people watching him take wickets.

Mohammad Ali was the other half of it. He bowled 17 overs — more than anyone — for 3 for 67, and his three were the three that mattered most after the top order had gone: Harry Brook bowled for 15 in the eighteenth over, Jamie Smith bowled for 61 when the recovery was becoming a problem, and Ollie Robinson bowled for a two-ball duck two deliveries later. Between them Abbas and Ali bowled 32 of the day's 56 overs and took seven of the nine wickets. Khurram Shahzad was expensive at 79 from 15 but removed Cox; Ali Usman, the left-arm spinner whose five-for was Pakistan's only consolation at Headingley, bowled nine overs for 34 and was barely needed.

England's answer came from the two men least likely to be described as the heart of this batting order. Jordan Cox made 55 from 105 balls, which in this side is close to a monastic act — he was 6 from 21 at the first drinks break, 27 at lunch, 55 at tea, and he was still there when the score had gone from 36 for 3 to 187 for 6. It was the innings of a batter who had read the conditions correctly and decided that the runs would come later or not at all.

Jamie Smith disagreed, and was also right. He came in at 120 for 5 and hit ten fours in 80 balls, reaching fifty from 63, and the sixth-wicket stand with Cox was worth 67 from 67 deliveries — Smith making 38 of them. It was the passage that took England from a total that would have embarrassed them to one they can bowl at. When Ali bowled him for 61 at 222 for 7, and Robinson followed two balls later, the innings looked finished at 222 for 8. Then Jofra Archer hit 14 from 13 with a six, Gus Atkinson hit five fours in an unbeaten 27-ball 34, and the last ten overs of the day produced 62 runs for four wickets. Bad light arrived just after half past six with England 248 for 9 and Atkinson still swinging.

The Lord's surface is under more scrutiny than any pitch in England this year — the ICC rated it unsatisfactory in June after a Test against New Zealand that lasted barely two days and produced 33 wickets to seam bowling. This one behaved better, but not by as much as MCC would like. Nine wickets fell, eight of them to seam and one to a run-out, and no spinner took one. What separates this pitch from June's is that batters who were prepared to leave the ball survived: Cox faced 105 deliveries, Smith 80, Lawrence 41. The nick-off was available all day at a fuller length, and Pakistan bowled it. England, in their way, kept offering it.

The one blemish on Pakistan's day is written in the extras column. Ten no-balls, five of them from Khurram Shahzad and five from Mohammad Ali, plus ten leg byes — 22 extras from a total of 248, or roughly one in every eleven runs England scored. On a day when three of the wickets came from lbw or bowled, front-foot discipline is not a detail.

Where does that leave the match? England will say 248 for 9 in 56 overs is a competitive first-innings total on a surface where nine wickets fell to seam, and they will be encouraged that Archer, Atkinson, Robinson and Tongue get to bowl on it tomorrow morning with the same clouds forecast. Pakistan will say they bowled a side out for less than 250 on the first day of a Test at Lord's and lost only 56 overs to weather doing it. Both are true. The tenth wicket, whenever it comes on Friday morning, is worth watching for one reason: Atkinson at 34 not out has already made the difference between 210 and 248, and Pakistan will want the second new ball nowhere near his hitting arc.

Our preview leaned England, on the compound advantage of a 1-0 lead and a seam attack that took twenty wickets in three days at Headingley — and on the first day of this Test that lean looked premature rather than wrong. What we did get right was the warning attached to it: we wrote that Lord's is the one ground where Abbas's county craft meets a slope designed for his bowling. He took 4 for 56 and ran through the top three. We also flagged Babar Azam as the player who would decide whether Pakistan had their captain or his shadow; the finger held well enough for him to win the toss and set fields all day, and we will know more about the batting on Friday. The miss, honestly, was Mohammad Ali — three wickets, seventeen overs, and not a mention in our preview.