Pakistan's Top Order Crumbles to Historic Low Against England
On a grey, restless morning at Edgbaston, Pakistan walked out to begin a Test innings in England and promptly made the wrong kind of history.
Their top five were all dismissed for single figures – the first time any side has suffered that fate in a first innings of a Test in this country. Eleven previous instances worldwide, all in second innings collapses. This one came with the game barely awake.
By the time Babar Azam’s off stump was sent cartwheeling, Pakistan were 48-5 and clinging to Saud Shakeel’s bat for reassurance rather than any real control.
Tongue and torment
The tone of the day belonged to England’s seamers. Josh Tongue, fast, hostile and precise, delivered the defining ball of the session. Full, quick, angling in, it cannoned into the top of off stump and left Babar groping at thin air.
Clean bowled for 7. No covering it up, no unlucky edge, no debate. Just a captain beaten for pace and judgment, and a bowler striding back to his mark at Edgbaston with his first over of the spell ending in a roar.
From the other end, Ollie Robinson kept Pakistan pinned with a relentless diet of fuller lengths, shaping the ball away, probing, forcing indecision. When he did bang in a rare short ball, Saud Shakeel pulled him through square leg with ease, a reminder that this was no minefield. This was a decent pitch. Which only deepened the indictment of Pakistan’s top order.
Saud’s elegance amid the wreckage
Saud Shakeel played as if on a different surface. He unfurled a series of glorious cover drives, the ball gliding through extra cover with a kind of nonchalance that mocked the scoreboard.
One over captured the contradiction. First, a textbook drive, weight forward, hands through the line, racing to the rope. Next ball, he chased a wider one, far looser, and an inside edge whistled past leg stump for four more. Later in the same spell, another boundary, again through the covers, perfectly middled.
Stylish, yes. Secure, not quite.
England knew he was Pakistan’s lifeline and went hunting. Gus Atkinson, still searching for the figures his bowling has deserved all series, drew a thick, healthy edge as Saud threw his bat at a hint of width. The ball flew quickly and high to first slip. Ben Duckett leapt, got a hand to it, but couldn’t cling on. A second drop of the morning for him, this one tougher than the first, but still another life for Pakistan’s one composed presence.
At 43-4, that felt like a moment. For Atkinson, another “nearly”. For Saud, another chance.
A series of top-order failures
The collapse was not an isolated event. It has become the story of Pakistan’s tour.
Statistician Andy Zaltzman laid out the grim pattern. Across the series in England, Pakistan’s second wicket has fallen with the score on 6 and 13 at Leeds, 16 and 7 at Lord’s, and now 14 here. Just 56 runs in total before the fall of the second wicket across all innings.
An average of 5.6 for the first wicket, 11.2 before the second. Numbers that drag them towards an unwanted record. Australia’s 1888 tourists hold the current mark for the lowest average at the fall of the second wicket in an England series – 16. Pakistan are on course to undercut a statistic that has survived for well over a century.
At Edgbaston, that fragility was exposed again. Early wickets fell in a clatter, the innings stalled at 35-4, then 37-4, then 48-5. Each partnership felt temporary, each batter a brief interruption to England’s procession.
England relentless, rain restless
Jofra Archer gave way to Atkinson with Pakistan 35-4, the newcomer still with only one wicket in the series and a bruising average of 125. His rhythm and hostility have promised more than the scorebook has granted. This felt like another opportunity to tilt that balance.
Robinson, at the other end, sent down a couple of lovely away swingers to close out an over, then strayed down the leg side to concede four byes as the ball flicked Jamie Smith’s gloves. Even Pakistan’s extras seemed to mock them – “edging closer to their lowest ever Test score,” as the commentary noted, via a mistake rather than resistance.
Rain tried to intervene. During the drinks break, it thickened, the covers trundled on, then stopped halfway as the drizzle eased. The umpires waved them back, play continued, and so did England’s control.
The ball kept finding the edge, the pads, the stumps. Pakistan kept searching for answers they have not found all series.
Saud Shakeel’s cover drives, for all their beauty, only highlighted the gulf: one batter in rhythm on a good surface, surrounded by a top order that has repeatedly folded under England’s new-ball pressure.
The question now is not whether Pakistan can rescue this innings. It is whether they can salvage any confidence at all from a tour where the first hour of every Test has become a recurring nightmare.
