THE cricket never ends and the carnival must keep performing, whether anyone is watching or not. That is what I say when friends ask me why, when a one-day series at home against Australia has just finished, England are now playing a three-Test series against Pakistan, in Pakistan. There is money to be made, contracts to be honoured, television deals to be kept. The show must go on.
And so the show arrives in Multan on Monday, where England will look to build on a successful home summer, in which they won five out of the six matches they played. Indeed, the last time they visited Pakistan in 2022, they won 3-0 and were the first team to score 500 runs in a single day of Test cricket. It was Bazball at its Bazballiest, as England battered their way past flat pitches and indifferent bowling to record a thumping win away from home, something that had eluded them for some time.
England's squad, much like its style, has been refined since then and they head into this series as overwhelming favourites against a Pakistan side that have been struggling of late, most notoriously in their World Cup loss to the US, and most recently in a 2-0 walloping they received at home at the hands of Bangladesh.
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