Pak vs Eng 2nd Test – WTC – Pakistan assistant coach Azhar Mahmood puts his spin on the Multan pitch

“We had a clear plan of what pitches to prepare for Bangladesh, and what to prepare against England,” he said on Tuesday. “Our approach was pace wickets against Bangladesh and spin pitches against England. Our instruction to the curator in the first Test was that the ball should turn after the second day. But the pitch did not change until the fifth day. The ball will start exchange on the ninth day.”

“You have to take 20 wickets,” said Mahmood. “We thought about how we would take those. We thought that if we used that pitch, the thinking was how we would take 20 wickets against England and we thought spin was the way to do that.

“The upcoming players are experienced. They are all experienced and have been playing high-level cricket for a while. The best thing is to play the players at home on familiar grounds, so I don’t think there is.” there will be so much pressure on that.”

“Pakistan has so much cricket coming up that the selection committee has decided to give Babar a break, because Pakistan have to go to Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.”

Azhar Mahmood to Babar Azam who has been dropped from the Test squad

While each of the incoming spinners – Zahid Mahmood, Noman Ali and Sajid Khan – have amassed a lot of first-class experience over the years, none of the latest. The Quaid-e-Azam Trophy season hasn’t started yet, meaning these players last played the red ball last season – none of them have played a first-class match since January this year. Throwing an England team that broke a number of records on this same ground last week, is not a relief.

“Babar is our number 1 player in terms of technique and skill,” he said. “Pakistan has so much cricket coming up that the selection committee decided to give Babar a rest, because Pakistan have to go to Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

“We have to use our conditions. We announced the team for one Test match because we knew there would be changes. After this we will fly to Australia to play white ball cricket. We knew we had to rest Shaheen and other important players because we have non-stop cricket for the next six months.”

There can be doubts about Mahmood’s thinking. No upcoming white-ball tour is as important to Pakistan as the three-match Test series at home against England. This is Pakistan’s biggest series of the current season, and there will always be questions about why the upcoming white-ball series cannot serve as a more suitable form of rotation.

Fielding three spinners in addition to Salman Agha, who Mahmood said in August was a “champion spinner”, requires a certain level of confidence that the field will change. “We left a lot of grass on the pitches and wanted the ball to turn in favor of the pitch. Let’s see if it works for us.”