Eng-Pak 2nd Test (Old Trafford, Jul 27-31 2006)

But when Harmison bowls like that, he is unstoppable. You can’t blame the Pak batsmen.

What bothers me is that we have nothing to counter that, nothing. No Shoaib, no Rana, no Asif, and almost the entire England batting line-up to get through.

The attack that won the Bangalore Test in March 2005 was, on paper, weaker than this one (Arshad Khan played and not Umar Gul).

Would Shahid Afridi have been a better choice to open, not because he might have scored more runs than Kamran Akmal but because the strength of the lower order vital part might not have been drained?

Did you see the shot Afridi played to get out? The man’s a lunatic and should not bat in Tests. Think back to Sri Lanka thrashing this England side, and then look at the Pakis.

Ultimately, despite the bowling, there will be few Pakistani batsmen – apart from Inzamam-ul-Haq – who can point to either an uncertain bounce or a special delivery as the cause of the collapse (8 for 29) that England in the last decade would have been proud of.