The Third Test at Edgbaston, and What Pakistan Have to Fix

England and Pakistan begin the third and final Test of their series at Edgbaston today, with play scheduled to start at 11am and the match running to 13 September.

How the series arrived here

England won the opening Test at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs inside three days. Pakistan were dismissed for 171 and 135; England made 409. Ollie Robinson took eight wickets in the match and Josh Tongue took eight, which is an unusual way for one Test to be decided and a difficult one to plan around.

The second Test at Lord's followed immediately, in a series compressed into a short window.

Pakistan's problem is first innings

The pattern across this series has been the same one. Pakistan have not made a first-innings score that gave their bowlers something to defend, and in England in September that is close to the whole game. A side batting first and making under 200 is not usually beaten by a plan; it is beaten by arithmetic.

Babar Azam missed Headingley entirely with a hand injury, first sustained in the West Indies and aggravated when he was struck on the same finger in a warm-up. Salman Ali Agha captained a Test for the first time in his absence. Babar declared himself around ninety per cent fit before the second Test.

Getting your most experienced batter back is only a solution if the problem was his absence, and Pakistan's first-innings trouble started before it.

What is at stake beyond the series

Pakistan sit ninth in the current World Test Championship cycle, on 19.05 per cent of available points from seven matches. England sit seventh on 29.76 per cent from fourteen.

England having played twice as many Tests as Pakistan while sitting two places above them is a comment on both. A percentage table punishes volume: England have had more chances to gain points and more chances to dilute the ones they hold, and fourteen matches for five wins is a modest return however it is dressed.

For Pakistan the cycle is close to decided. For England, seventh with fourteen played is the position of a side whose recent record has not matched its ambitions, under a captain and coach who both took the job this summer.

Root's first series

This is the first series of Joe Root's second spell as England captain, with Stephen Fleming as head coach, after Ben Stokes retired from international cricket in June. Winning it 3-0 and winning it 2-1 will be read very differently, which is the sort of thing that is only true of a new regime's first assignment.