England vs Pakistan A: Adil Rashid struggles but spin twin Moeen Ali gives England hope

Nobody must have felt the slog more than Adil Rashid as England were made to toil in the field for 90 overs on the final day of their opening tour match against Pakistan A.

The Yorkshire leg-spinner is primed to make his Test debut when the series proper starts against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.

But on a day when England at one point went 44.4 soul-crushing overs without taking a wicket, Rashid failed to make the most of his opportunity to impress the England coach Trevor Bayliss.

Moeen Ali had done the same on day one when failing to impress as an opening batsman. Yet he followed up that disappointment by showing just why he is England’s most potent bowling weapon in these arid conditions, taking three of the five wickets to fall at a tidy 1.86 runs per over.

Mark Wood was impressive too, taking the first wicket of the day thanks to an excellent catch at backward square by Stuart Broad that saw the back of Sami Aslam.

The Durham fast bowler was the pick of England’s seamers, extracting something extra out of the pitch and appearing to find a hint of reverse swing.

The fact his 13 overs went for just 24 runs was a fair reflection of his excellence and indication of his potential to make a significant impact in the Test series.

Too much, of course, can be read into games such as these. This is, after all, a tour match so contrived that both teams agreed beforehand that each would spend a day batting and fielding regardless of the number of wickets lost.

There is one more warm-up contest, starting tomorrow, which is again two days long and where the result will be equally irrelevant.

What is relevant, though, are individual performances and Rashid will be disappointed with his here. The 27-year-old bowled 20 overs without joy, conceding 55 runs. There needed to be more variety, more magic.

Rashid was unlucky in the 13th over when he had Iftikhar Ahmed dropped on 61 by Jimmy Anderson at slip. Iftikhar, also given a life on 11 by captain Alastair Cook off the bowling of Broad, went on to make an unbeaten 92.

Rashid, like many in this England squad who have little experience of playing in Asian conditions, is learning how tough life can be here. The heat in Sharjah is unrelenting, the pitch low, slow and largely unresponsive to anything other than spin.

Things will not get any easier in Abu Dhabi next week against Pakistan, who are unbeaten in all seven of their Test series in the UAE and destroyed an England side ranked No 1 in the world 3-0 the last time they were here in 2012.

So it is vital that Cook’s men take their chances in the field, as they did during last summer’s Ashes. In all, three catches went down yesterday, off-spinner Moeen also dropping Fawad Alam off his own bowling on 50 to add to Iftikhar’s two let-offs.

“We’ve got to get used to conditions quickly and take those chances because that’s how we’re going to win the series,” said Wood. “We did that in the summer at home and we’re going to have to do the same here because we know we’re not going to get as many chances with the pitches and the heat.”

One survivor from that 2012 Test series here managed to get some joy late on, Anderson striking with the second new ball to have Usman Salahuddin caught down the leg side by wicketkeeper Jos Buttler.

That left Pakistan A in some trouble on 172 for 5 but by the end of the day they had taken their score beyond 200 without further loss.