Pakistan vs England: Joe Root and Alastair Cook keep tourists competitive on second day

It was the centenary of WG Grace’s death yesterday. If the old boy was stirring, he would have approved of what he was looking down on. Not, of course, that he could have dreamt of playing against Pakistan in the UAE, if only because neither country had been formed when he was strutting his stuff across Victorian England.

But as the inventor of modern batting, a man with an array of strokes who could play both forward and back on extremely dodgy pitches, he would have admired the way that England’s two most accomplished batsmen went about their work on the second day of the second Test. Joe Root was consummate, assured in concept and execution, Alastair Cook quite his equal on the sort of surface that, once again, could have been designed with him in mind.

Together, while pleasing WG, they ensured that England stayed firmly in this match after their bowlers performed splendidly in the morning against some pretty hapless, ill-considered batting. After the worrying loss of two early wickets, the pair put on 113 from 31 overs, which in terms of this series is rattling along, and though Cook was to fall into a trap cunningly laid, the tourists finished the day on 182 for 3.

This put them 196 behind and if their colleagues can muster some of their assurance, a lead, from which who knows what might occur, is eminently possible. While the two leading Test match-scorers of the year were in – true it helps that England have played more matches than everybody else but you still have to know what you are doing – England were in control.

The fear that Yasir Shah, the prolific Pakistan leg spinner, would wreak mayhem was not realised. Both took him on and Root was no less than sleek against him. Cook, more functional, survived with his characteristically dogged method, fortunate perhaps when a tangled sweep rolled on to the stumps but did not dislodge the bails, but otherwise looking once more to book in for bed and breakfast.

It was a surprise, shortly after Misbah-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s captain, shifted in a backward short leg, that Cook should obligingly nudge a defensive nudge directly into his hands. The fact that the England captain had become the second most prolific opener in Test history – overtaking Graeme Smith, with only Sunil Gavaskar now ahead of him – will not have consoled him a jot.

The threat of Yasir remains palpable. His reputation has preceded him, courtesy of 61 wickets in his 10 Test matches, and with a leg spinner that turns and a decent slider, he can inflict some damage yet.

Jonny Bairstow, who survived the day, looked initially as though he might be playing him by numbers but creditably he refused to be embarrassed by it. When he danced down and dispatched Zulfiqar Babar over long off for six, he looked as though he might be getting the hang of it. Zulfiqar might be the lesser of the two spinners, which is not to say he should be sniffed at.

That England are as much in the match as they are is because of their exemplary bowling before lunch. The feeling in the dressing room was they did not garner the wickets they merited on the first day but persevere and ye shall be rewarded.

Pakistan lost their remaining six wickets for 96 before lunch. Misbah, who had so thrillingly gone to his hundred the evening before, was out to the day’s fifth ball.

It was a lovely piece of bowling by Stuart Broad, who delivered a sequence of short balls to coerce the batsman on to the back foot and then conveyed a fast, accurate, full length ball which struck a crease-bound Misbah on the pad. Eternal verities are what the game is about.

There were two more wickets each for Moeen Ali and Mark Wood, both of whom continue to make a deceptively prodigious impression in this England team. Wood’s speed and low trajectory lend a different dimension. Moeen has now taken 50 Test wickets and has done so more quickly than any England spinner since Walter Robins in 1937.

It took Graeme Swann, his immediate predecessor as England’s off spinner, 562 overs to take 50 wickets.Moeen has done it in 482. Clearly, he is doing something right.

This does not quite extend yet to his batting partnership with Cook. There was always an element of risk about Moeen being elevated to open the innings in Tests since he had never done it previously in a first-class match and there is nothing to suggest that he will easily make the transformation.

Moeen was out in the second over of England’s innings, caught at short leg off the face of the bat for one. This only exposed Ian Bell, who edged a superb ball from Imran Khan behind. Bell keeps receiving good balls and he keeps being dismissed by them. In the 20 innings since his most recent Test hundred he has been out for 13 or fewer on 15 occasions. The credit is used up and by keeping their senior batsmen in the team the selectors are using their own system of quantitative easing.