England, the world's No1 Test team, have a hectic year ahead and kick off with one of their toughest challenges
Let us hope they have had a good rest because there will be little respite in 2012. England can still boast that they are the No1 Test team in the world and they play five series this year as they attempt to stay on top of the pile. They will also defend their Twenty20 crown in Sri Lanka in September and there will be inevitable one-day internationals against Australia and anyone else who happens to be passing by. Soon, once the Morgan review is put into operation, it will be considerably more strenuous to play for England than it will be on the old county circuit.
The first challenge of 2012 is likely to be one of the more difficult. At present, Sri Lanka away (in March and April) and West Indies at home (in May and June) are less taxing propositions than playing Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates, where the first Test of a three-match series begins in Dubai on Tuesday. In the second half of the year England play South Africa at home and India away. If Andrew Strauss's side are still at No1 in 12 months' time they will have triumphed ? again.
The last time England played Pakistan away from home marked the beginning of the disintegration of a fine team. Still basking in the euphoria of their 2005 Ashes victory, England should have won the first Test in Multan but lost and were thrashed in the third match in Lahore.
Now England have arrived in UAE with another fine team and with three survivors from 2005 ? Strauss, Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell. They are also on the crest of a wave, having reached the giddy heights of No1 after defeating India last summer (at the time we thought this to be a significant victory, but India are performing so lamentably in Australia that we can no longer be so sure).
This England team may not be as exciting or charismatic as the 2005 side, but they are more stable, more grounded, more disciplined and less likely to implode. Marcus Trescothick, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff were often mesmerising to watch, which is seldom the case with Strauss, Alastair Cook or Jonathan Trott, but the latest trio know how to churn out the runs that win Test matches. Bell is a much better batsman in 2012 than he was in 2005, though the same cannot be said of Pietersen. This England side is superior behind the stumps and in the spin-bowling department. Moreover, the team is more tenacious and tight-knit than in 2005.
None of which guarantees victory in the UAE. Pakistan can be the most resilient of sides. Currently they lack the advantage of playing at home as well as being denied three of their best players because of the spot-fixing saga. In their own country, where they seldom play, they do not possess plush cricket academies, run by coaches boasting all sorts of wonderful certificates, who have access to every sort of ologist yet invented. Yet Pakistan do much more than survive, recently dominating Test matches against Sri Lanka in the UAE as well as winning their series in Bangladesh.
In Misbah-ul-Haq they have a captain, mature in years ? he is 37 ? and outlook. He seems as sensible as Strauss. With uncomplicated pragmatism ? "It's better to win by playing defensively than to lose playing aggressively," he says ? he has guided the side astutely in the past 12 months while scoring his quota of runs, usually very slowly. He is one of seven canny thirtysomethings in Pakistan's squad. On Tuesday he plays his 32nd Test, but his first against England.
Often there is a macabre shiver of anticipation when these two sides meet. The legacy of controversy spans the decades: from spot-fixing, alleged ball-tampering, arguments about umpiring, arguments with umpires right back to the drenching of an umpire, Idris Begh, in Peshawar on an England A tour in the 50s. Yet if ever if you were to choose two captains from each country who are sufficiently level-headed and phlegmatic to avoid another furore, then Strauss and Misbah would be at the top of the list. Unless the pitches in the UAE are desperately soporific this is to be welcomed.
Pakistan have never lost in the UAE, but they have won only one of their five matches there. In November 2010 there were two run-soaked draws against South Africa. Two months ago Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka 1-0 after a nine-wicket victory in Dubai (the other two games, in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, were drawn).
Every time Pakistan have played in Dubai they have opted for two pace bowlers and two full-time spinners, Saeed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman, both of whom are flexing their fingers for Tuesday. This pair has usually been augmented by the respectable off-breaks of Mohammad Hafeez.
It is not expected that England will opt for the same balance of attack despite a fine performance by Monty Panesar against the Pakistan Cricket Board XI albeit on what was, in effect, a fifth or sixth-day pitch by the time he started to bowl. Panesar's hopes of inclusion on Tuesday have been diminished by the departure of Tim Bresnan along with his painful elbow.
Bresnan suddenly seems a pivotal cricketer for England on subcontinental pitches ? especially now that he is unavailable. He may not be the perfect Test No7 but after 10 matches he somehow manages to average 45 with the bat. With Eoin Morgan struggling for runs, it would have been tempting for England to play five bowlers and two spinners in Dubai with Matt Prior at six, Bresnan at seven, Stuart Broad at eight, Graeme Swann at nine and the Aussie tormentors, Jimmy Anderson and Panesar, thereafter. Bresnan might have been able to "balance" the side as Flintoff and Craig White have done in the past when England have wanted to play two spinners.
In Bresnan's absence England will be reluctant to play five specialist bowlers. They could ? for the first time in ages ? play two seamers (Broad and Anderson) and two spinners with modest support in the form of Trott and Pietersen. They could at the 11th hour change tack and play Ravi Bopara rather than Morgan at six in the hope that Bopara may add to his tally of one Test wicket from 54 overs. However, Bopara is the only member of the squad who has not been selected for either of the warm-up matches and this regime rarely deals in U-turns.
The likeliest outcome is that England will stick to their tried and trusted formula despite the moribund surface expected in Dubai by playing three pacemen plus Swann. In which case the selectors have to decide whether Steven Finn or Chris Tremlett should be the third paceman.
There is one other challenge for Strauss and his team. They will have to operate in a vacuum. Last winter in Australia the stands were usually full and noisy ? often in support of his side. This is also the case whenever England play at home. In Dubai they will be playing in front of rows of empty seats, a surreal reminder of the sad state of affairs that demands that the UAE ? for the moment ? remains the home of Pakistan cricket.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/14/pakistan-england-familiar-foes
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