Pakistan's pitch-perfect gamble exposes England's familiar batting flaw

It was the image that defined the Test match. Ben Stokes was out of his crease, down on one knee with hands on hips, while his bat flew towards short fine leg after slipping out of his hands. Stokes looked bemused at what had just happened - both in the moment of his dismissal, stumped off the irrepressible Noman Ali , and across the previous three-and-a-half days.

Stokes was England's top-scorer in their second innings, as they failed to get even halfway to their target of 297. All but two runs in his 37 came thanks to sweep shots, whether conventional, reverse or paddle, and he was out as soon as he changed his plan. He charged down, trying to hit Noman over mid-on for six, and threw his bat so hard that he lost hold of it.

England had lost this Test long before Stokes fell on the final morning, but his perplexed reaction epitomised their 152-run loss in Multan. They kept Pakistan in check for most of the 10 sessions in the match, but there were too many periods in which the game's tempo went into fast-forward and England failed to keep up - most notably, when losing 4 for 14 on the second evening.

This was a heavy defeat, reminiscent of England's four losses in India earlier this year but against a significantly less heralded spin attack. Noman and Sajid Khan are both journeymen with only 23 previous Test caps between them whom England were confident they could take down, but they shared all 20 wickets as Pakistan's sudden change of strategy paid dividends.

With the benefit of more than an hour to reflect, Stokes traced England's defeat back to Tuesday morning, and the moment that the coin came down a head. "The toss was always going to be massive," he said. "Me and Shan [Masood] both knew that, walking out there at 9.30am. I always call tails, and I won't be changing it next week."

It was clear as soon as Pakistan decided to reuse the strip from the first Test that neither team would want to bat last, as Stokes had acknowledged on the eve of the match. He doubled down on Friday, saying: "If we'd have won the toss, it could have been completely different - and then [playing on the same pitch] would've been a silly decision."

Recycling a Test pitch was unprecedented, and the unique nature of this defeat will make it easy for England to write off. In truth, two passages of play cost them: the 15 minutes of mayhem on the second evening when they collapsed to Sajid's offspin, and their lapses in the field on the third afternoon which left Stokes so furious that he apologised at the end of the day.

England's batting on the final day was frantic, with a series of dismissals that looked ugly when stitched together in a highlights package. Ollie Pope chipped a return catch back to Sajid playing a loose off-drive, Harry Brook was out playing off the back foot on a low pitch for the second time in the match, and Jamie Smith top-edged a slog-sweep to Masood at mid-on.

But Stokes did not criticise his batters, instead saying that there was little point hanging around on a ninth-day surface: "It's always going to be in the bowlers' favour when there is so much going on… You couldn't just look to sit in there at that time, because there was always going to be one with your name on it. We had to find a way to score runs."

He also protected them when suggesting that their first-innings collapse could be explained by a sudden change in the pitch from "out of pretty much nowhere". Stokes said: "That's when it really started to happen for the spinners, spinning out of the footholes and the cracks… It's very easy to say that's where we lost the game."

The charitable reading of Pakistan's pitch ploy was that they knew England would have their measure on a fresh surface, as they showed in the first Test. But in reality, it was grounded in their need to take 20 wickets - and a recognition that even without Abrar Ahmed, their first-choice spinner, they would create regular chances against England's batters on a turner.

The bigger picture is that England's attacking method under Stokes and Brendon McCullum's leadership has worked brilliantly in conditions where bat has dominated ball, but less so when bowlers are on top. They have not scored 400 runs across the match in any of the five overseas defeats this year, after four in India, and they have lost at least 10 wickets to spin in all of them.

This was also a reminder that they remain heavily reliant on Joe Root, who averages 93.40 with four hundreds in England's seven wins this year but 33.27 with a single century in their six defeats. As soon as Root was out on the final morning, pinned lbw while sweeping Noman, their hopes were up.

England's focus will now turn to next week's series decider in Rawalpindi, which rarely favours spinners to this extent, after which they do not play another Test in Asia until a two-match series in Bangladesh in early 2027. But New Zealand and Australia will have taken notice of this result: preparing a pitch which favours ball over bat and getting Root cheaply remains the way to beat England.