Former England captain and commentator Michael Vaughan compared the current Pakistan batting unit to a second-division County line-up. Notably, his comments came after Pakistan got bundled out for 110 runs in the first innings of the Lord’s Test.
Interestingly, Pakistan entered the second Test at Lord’s after suffering an innings defeat to England in the series opener. Speaking to BBC Test Match Special, Vaughan slammed the Pakistan batting unit.
“But this is Pakistan batting. Is it second division county cricket? There’s no way that they are batting in any standard to say that; that is a Test match batting lineup,” Vaughan said.
“You’re not going to get hurt. There’s no batter that’s going to hurt them. No one’s going to damage their figures, and it’s really, ‘roll up, roll up, who wants to get the wickets?’,” he said.
“I think they all know that Pakistan aren’t going to get big scores. So you’re only going to be out there for 40 to 50 overs, so you give everything in every spell, you keep going to Joe Root saying, ‘Err, I’ll bowl another one.’ There are so many wickets out there,” he added.
“It’s so easy. They’re still doing a good job, and they’re still looking very threatening. And I think this bowling attack, the way they’re bowling, will challenge better batting lineups if they continue in this fashion,” Vaughan concluded.
For the unversed, opening batter Azan Awais’ 46 off 102 balls was the top contributor for Pakistan in the first innings. The next best was Saud Shakeel’s 16 off 16 balls. None of the other batters touched double digits.
After losing the toss, England posted a dominating total of 290 runs in 66.4 overs. Jordan Cox (55), Jamie Smith (61) and Gus Atkinson (45) were the top batters. Mohammad Abbas scalped a four-wicket haul.
