Pakistan's Batting Struggles in England: Smith's Exciting Challenge Ahead

At Edgbaston, the numbers are brutal. Five completed innings on this tour, not once past 200. In the final Test, Pakistan sit on 52 for 2, still 268 runs away from merely making England bat again.

The cricket has been grim. The backdrop, even messier.

Seven players and head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed have already been recalled home by the PCB after the Lord’s defeat. An official inquiry into player conduct is underway. For a young, fragile batting group, it is the kind of storm that can swallow a tour whole.

In the middle of it stands Michael Smith, the newly appointed batting coach, insisting the mood is “good” and the talent is real.

“I know nothing about that [the inquiry] so I can't really comment on anything like that,” he told reporters after day two at Edgbaston. “It's the first time I've heard of those things so I'm not too sure.”

He was far more certain about the players in front of him.

“For me there's a lot of quality in Pakistan. We've seen it for many years and lots of countries go through slight changes. This is one where we've got some younger players with some experienced players but it's the learning and how quickly we can get them to learn and get comfortable in the Test environment to really help them from a long-term point of view.”

A batting order learning on the job

The inexperience is stark. Among Pakistan’s top seven in this Test, only Babar Azam and Shan Masood have toured England before. The rest are being asked to learn the hardest format in some of the hardest conditions, against a seasoned home attack that has smelled vulnerability from the first day of the series.

Smith accepts they are in a transition phase. He also knows exactly where they are falling short.

“We've shown some real good signs but just not for long enough and I think that's probably the biggest lesson,” he said. “We need some of our guys to be playing for hours at times and in certain game plans.

“I think Saud [Shakeel] has shown us at times, Azan [Awais] has shown us and Shan [too], but we need that for hours and not just for half a session or so.”

That, in many ways, is the story of Pakistan’s tour. Fleeting class. Half-sessions of resistance. A partnership that hints at something, then disappears. In England, those lapses are mercilessly exposed.

“Some of the players, it's their first tour of England and they haven't got a lot of Test experience so they are learning some challenging lessons along the way and they have to learn on the Test circuit which is a challenging one,” Smith said. “We’ve got to keep making sure that we're showing small really good signs at times but we need to now put a big play in to really get that confidence going again.”

“Tough, challenging” – and still upbeat

Given the scores, you might expect a dressing room on edge. Smith insists that is not the case.

“It’s been tough, it’s been challenging but let’s not take away [the fact that] we've come up against a really good bowling unit in home conditions who've been excellent,” he said.

He does not want this tour to become a final verdict on players who are still figuring out how to bat in these conditions.

“I suppose we might not see the sort of success we want to see now but hopefully if a lot of these players are back on our next UK tour we'll really see an upward trend and I think that's the time to really judge them – especially some of the younger players who get their first taste of the English type of conditions.

“It's tough cricket but the one thing our boys are really doing is embracing being on tour and actually enjoying themselves on tour as well as a group, as a whole.”

Enjoyment is an unusual word for a team repeatedly bowled out cheaply, but Smith keeps coming back to the bigger picture. He has only just taken the job. He wants time before calling for any structural overhaul in how Pakistan prepare batters for overseas challenges.

What he does not lack is enthusiasm for the task.

A “bloody exciting” project

“I think I've got a bloody exciting challenge on my hands because there are some serious players,” he said. “Let’s not worry about what's happening here, we've got some really exciting players and [their] potential is exceptionally high.

“It's just how quickly can we get them to that level, especially playing outside of Pakistan. That's going to be a big challenge and something we're really excited about.”

That “here” he refers to is a scoreboard that refuses to move past 200, a series slipping away, and a final Test in which Pakistan must do something they have not managed all tour just to drag the match into a fourth innings.

For now, the immediate task is blunt and unforgiving: survive, then build, then finally push past that 200-run barrier and beyond to make England bat again.

If this group really is as exciting as Smith believes, Edgbaston is where they have to start proving it.