Pakistan’s batting misery on their tour to England extended to a third successive innings as they were bundled out for 110 in response to the hosts’ 290 at Lord’s on Friday, leaving former England captain Michael Vaughan unimpressed.
The Pakistan innings lasted merely 37.2 overs, with even the returning skipper Babar Azam unable to prevent the shambles. Making matters worse, the side also lost batter Imam-ul-Haq to injury. Vaughan roasted the batting performance, comparing the effort to a shoddish second-division County game.
“I’ll be brutally honest. The England bowlers aren’t being challenged at all. And this Pakistan batting lineup is possibly the easiest batting lineup I’ve seen in a long time to bowl to. And not only that, I think as a bowler, I think they’re all queuing up to bowl because they know there are wickets out there,” Vaughan said on the BBC Test Match Special.
“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 added.
‘So easy’
Pakistan suffered an innings and 103-run defeat in the first Test of the series at Leeds inside three days last week.
“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,” said Vaughan.
“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. 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,” he added.
Pakistan rank at the bottom of the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) standings in the ongoing cycle, accumulating only 16 points from seven matches.