Pakistan stun England

Pakistan’s sensational 22-run win over England in the Multan Test, earned them a 1-0 lead in the three match series. Pakistan conceded a lead of 144 runs to England after being bundled out for 274 in their first innings. It thus provided only the 40th instance in Test cricket when a side won despite having a first innings deficit of 100 runs or more. It was also the fourth such instance for Pakistan. See Table 1.

England’s first innings score 418 is the second highest first innings total by any side against Pakistan in a lost match after India’s 449 at Bangalore three Tests ago. See Table 2.

* Marcus Trescothick’s fabulous knock of 193 runs in the first innings is also the second highest by any player against Pakistan in a lost cause after Virender Sehwag’s 201 in Bangalore earlier this year. Trescothick innings is thus the highest by any captain while losing to Pakistan. Table 3 has the details.

* Interestingly, in Pakistan’s last three Test victories, the highest individual scores by the opponent team in the first innings have been quite high: Sehwag’s 201 - Pakistan won by 168 runs, Lara 153 - Pakistan won by 136 runs, Trescothick 193 - Pakistan won by 22 runs

* Correspondingly in all those victories, the opponents scored more than 400 runs in the first innings - India 449, WI 401 and now England 418.

* It's after four years, that Pakistan have won two consecutive Test matches against teams other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. The last such occurrence was against West Indies at Sharjah in 2002 (Pak won 2-0). Pakistan have now won three of their last four Tests.

* The last time Pakistan won the first Test of a series, was two years and 7 series ago, against South Africa at Lahore by 8 wickets. Pakistan went on to win the two-Test series 1-0. Discounting the series’ against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe since the turn of the century (after 01 Jan 2000), Pakistan have registered victories six times in the opening Tests of the 17 series they played. Five times they also went onto win the series while the remaining one was drawn. See Table 4.Click to see the tables