England v Pakistan: toss delayed for second men’s cricket Test, day one – live

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We’ll have an inspection at 11.10am, says Ian Ward. Sky have just shown the highlights of Pakistan’s win at Lord’s in 2016 … what a game.

Zain Malik writes in:

Bland, poor, predictable, tired: the weakest Pakistan side to visit England since 1954. The precise adjective hardly matters. When the English press has just watched your batting dissolve before lunch, it tends to grow rather fond of the thesaurus.

And yet history suggests that a thoroughly humiliated Pakistan can be a dangerous thing. Rock bottom has often served less as a resting place than a trampoline: sometimes towards victory, sometimes merely towards a performance that restores the will to live.

Headingley has seldom been especially hospitable. St John’s Wood, however, is different territory. Pakistan have played England 15 times at Lord’s and possess the faintly insolent record of five wins against four defeats, with six draws. For all England’s proprietorial claims upon the Home of Cricket, Pakistan have occasionally behaved there like difficult tenants who have discovered that the landlord cannot legally evict them.

So, with the suzerainty of Lord’s once again at stake, Babar returning to find Inzamam’s great portrait and Pakistan having already located the ocean floor at Headingley, I would hesitate before writing off the men in green.

There is nowhere left for them to go but up, which, admittedly, has never stopped Pakistan from attempting to dig.

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