ENG vs PAK, 3rd Test — Day 1 Stumps: Pakistan 133 all out, England 156/4, lead by 23

There is a version of this dead rubber that Pakistan will have imagined on the way to Birmingham. A new coaching staff, three new caps, Saim Ayub back in the Test side, and the weight of a lost series lifted off the shoulders of the men who remained. After Lord's the PCB sent seven players home and replaced the coaching staff; Razaullah, Mohammad Imran and wicketkeeper Ghazi Ghori were handed debuts. England, by contrast, did not change a thing, won the toss and bowled.

What followed was the same innings Pakistan have been playing all summer, only quicker. They were 26 for 4 inside ten overs, 48 for 5 when Babar Azam was bowled, 100 for 7 at lunch and 133 all out in 33.5 overs. By the close England were 156 for 4 and 23 ahead, and a Test scheduled for five days already had the shape of one that will not need them.

Ollie Robinson began it in the third over. Saim Ayub, in his first Test innings since 2025, was trapped lbw for 0 from his tenth ball, ball-tracking confirming it would have hit leg stump — and with it Robinson reached 100 Test wickets. Reports put his average at the landmark at 19.34, and noted that only Vernon Philander, this century, had got to a hundred wickets averaging under 20. It is a number worth sitting with.

Jofra Archer had Azan Awais caught by Tongue at 14. Robinson had Abdullah Shafique caught by Dan Lawrence at 24. Archer removed Shan Masood — caught by the substitute fielder Wylie — at 26, in the tenth over. Four down, and the new ball not yet ten overs old. Josh Tongue then did the damage in the middle of the session: Babar Azam bowled for 7 at 48, Ghazi Ghori lbw for 4 on debut at 64, Mohammad Imran bowled for 5 at 84. Pakistan went to lunch on 100 for 7 in 23 overs, and lost Razaullah to Robinson in the first over after it, caught by Ben Duckett.

The wicket that ended the resistance belonged to Tongue and to something he borrowed. Saud Shakeel, on 43, was bowled through the gate by a wobble-seam delivery — a ball Tongue said he had only started trying in the nets that week after talking it through with Robinson. It was, he told reporters, “the first time I bowled it in a game and it got me a wicket.” He finished with 4 for 42. Robinson's 11 overs cost 15. Archer took the last wicket, Abbas caught by Harry Brook for 21, and the innings ended at 133.

A detail worth noticing: the highest partnership of Pakistan's innings was the last one. Mohammad Abbas and Mohammad Ali added 26 from 46 balls for the tenth wicket — more than any of the pairs above them. Abbas's 21 from 36, with four fours, was the second-highest score in the innings. The extras column, 20, was the third. That is not an indictment of Nos. 10 and 11; it is a description of what happened above them.

For the first dozen overs of England's reply, Pakistan looked like a side with something to say. Mohammad Ali had Ben Duckett caught by Babar Azam for 11 at 12. Mohammad Abbas — the preview's player to watch — had Jordan Cox lbw for 4 at 24. England went to tea on 35 for 2 in ten overs, and soon after it Razaullah, 21 years old and with, by the Express Tribune's count, eight first-class matches behind him, came on for his first over in Test cricket. His fourth ball swung in and struck Joe Root on the knee roll. Chris Gaffaney raised the finger, Root reviewed, and ball-tracking sent him back for 8. England were 39 for 3.

Some careers begin with a knock on the door. Razaullah's began with a knock on Joe Root's pad, and for a few overs the whole day seemed to lean towards a 21-year-old playing his first Test.

Emilio Gay and Harry Brook leaned it back. They added 104 from 135 balls for the fourth wicket — Gay patient, reaching fifty from 95 balls, Brook quicker, reaching his from 70. Gay had made 60 from 114 balls with nine fours when Razaullah returned to bowl him at 143 in the 34th over, the debutant's second wicket and a deserved one. Brook finished the day unbeaten on 52 with Dan Lawrence 5 not out alongside him. Fourteen wickets fell on the first day; England, alone among the two sides, found a partnership.

It would be easy to write Pakistan off in a paragraph, and it would be unfair to the three or four of them who did not deserve to be written off. Saud Shakeel walked in at 26 for 4 and made 43 from 47 balls with seven fours, playing with a freedom that suggested he had decided the only way to survive was to score. While he was at the crease Pakistan added 81; he made more than half of them. He was also the one who faced the microphones afterwards, and he did not hide.

He also said, and this matters, that he did not see it as a question of confidence — that a player without confidence does not belong at this level. That is a senior batter holding a young dressing room to a standard, not blaming it. Reports noted that this was the first time all of a side's top five had failed to reach double figures in a Test first innings in England, a statistic that will follow this team home.

The positives are small but real. Razaullah bowled with genuine pace — Nasser Hussain, on Sky, said simply that he “hurried Joe Root” — and took the two best wickets of England's innings. Abbas, at 21 with the bat and a wicket with the ball, keeps doing his job in a side that keeps undoing it. And Mohammad Ali, 5 not out from 19 balls at No. 11, showed that the bowling was survivable for anyone willing to stay behind the ball.

Shakeel's own reading was that there was a little juice in the pitch early and that batting first meant meeting it. The numbers agree, and they add a nuance. Both innings began in almost identical fashion: Pakistan were 26 for 4 after 9.3 overs, England 39 for 3 after 11.4. The new ball, in each case, did most of the day's work. What separated the teams was what happened once it softened — Pakistan kept losing wickets at a rate of one every 20 or so balls, while Gay and Brook batted 135 balls together.

The modes of dismissal are telling too. Of the fourteen wickets that fell, eight were bowled or lbw — Babar, Shakeel, Imran and Gay bowled; Ayub, Ghori, Cox and Root leg-before. That is a surface rewarding bowlers who attacked the stumps rather than one misbehaving; Tongue himself described it afterwards as a good pitch. Robinson's 11 overs for 15, five of them maidens, say the rest.

Our preview leaned England and named Robinson, Tongue and Archer as the attack Pakistan had found no answer for; all ten Pakistan wickets went to those three. It suggested Pakistan move Shakeel up to four above Babar — Pakistan batted him at six, and he came in at 26 for 4 and top-scored anyway, which rather makes the preview's point for it. It floated Abrar Ahmed or Noman Ali for a turning pitch later in the match; neither is in the XI, which has no specialist spinner.

Where we were wrong, or at least early: the preview billed this as the Test in which Joe Root would get the fifty it described as taking him past a Tendulkar record. He made 8, lbw to a debutant's fourth ball, and with England already ahead it is not certain he bats again. It also said Edgbaston should bat better than Lord's. On Day 1, fourteen wickets fell; the Gay–Brook stand suggests it may yet prove right, but not today.

England resume on 156 for 4, 23 ahead, with Brook on 52 and Lawrence on 5, and Jamie Smith, Gus Atkinson, Robinson, Archer and Tongue still to come. Every run from here is a run Pakistan must chase in their second innings. The ball will be 39 overs old at the start, with the second new ball due after 80 — which means Pakistan's best window is the first hour, before Brook settles back in.

For Pakistan, the question is whether Razaullah can find the same pace and shape on a second morning, and whether Abbas and Ali can keep England's scoring rate — four an over on the first evening — in check. A lead of 150 makes the next three days a formality. A lead held under 100 would, at least, make them a Test match.