Smith’s pricey drop offers main blow to England’s second Test hopes

The ball popped in, then out – and with it went England’s best chance of another miracle in Multan.

Pakistan had slipped to 122 for five, a lead of just 197 and with their third-innings fraility threatening to resurface, when the persevering Brydon Carse found the edge of Salman Agha’s bat. As the ball headed for the gloves of Jamie Smith, Carse prepared to celebrate. Inexplicably, Smith dropped it.

Two deliveries later, Agha was dropped again – a tougher chance for Joe Root at first slip, but a chance nonetheless. Carse, who has bowled his heart out in his first two Tests, let out a yelp that might briefly have been confused with the local muezzin’s call to prayer.

Unless England knock off a target of 297 – far more than they have ever managed to win a Test in Asia – his yelp may echo all the way to a decider next week in Rawalpindi, where you can be sure an order has already been placed by the Pakistan Cricket Board for another turner.

And England’s slim hopes were dealt two crushing blows as the sun disappeared round the back of the stands. From the third ball of the chase, Ben Duckett top-edged an ambitious sweep off Sajid Khan and was easily caught by Mohammad Rizwan – a duck to remove some of the gloss from his first-innings century.

Three overs later, Zak Crawley advanced at slow left-armer Noman Ali and, just as ambitiously, played against the turn. He missed, allowing Rizwan to complete the stumping and leaving Crawley, down on one knee, resembling a fallen giraffe. He currently looks bereft of any kind of plan against spin.

At 11 for two, the target didn’t merely look distant: it looked cruel. Ollie Pope and Root stemmed the bleeding before stumps with an unbroken stand of 25. But it all felt as if England had never fully recovered from Smith’s howler.

On four and six when he enjoyed his two lives, Agha had made them pay in the afternoon heat. By the time he top-edged Carse into the safe hands of Ben Stokes at midwicket, he had advanced to 63 and added what felt like a decisive 65 for the ninth wicket with Sajid.

Since Sajid’s off-breaks earlier earned him figures of seven for 111, his recall has been little short of a triumph. He may be no one’s idea of a modern athlete, but his energy and snarl have been just what Pakistan needed. After six successive defeats, and without a win in 11 home Tests, Shan Masood’s side appeared ready to end their drought.

England stuck at it with the ball as they dismissed Pakistan for 221, with the Somerset spinners Jack Leach and Shoaib Bashir taking seven wickets between them, and Leach extending his series haul to an impressive 14 at 26. Bashir had his moments, especially before lunch when he removed each of Pakistan’s top three, but often the batsmen simply had to wait for the inevitable bad ball in every over.

Once again, it was Carse who lent England most menace, removing Rizwan for the third innings in a row, and testing every right-handers’ outside edge with pace and bounce. The first Ashes Test at Perth does not begin until November 21, 2025, but it will be a surprise if his name is not on the teamsheet.

For the moment, though, there is a series to win in Pakistan, and England will wince at the thought of how much harder they have made life for themselves.

In Pakistan’s first innings, they failed to review Matthew Potts’s caught-behind appeal when Rizwan was only six runs into his eventual 41. Throw in Smith’s reprieve of Agha, and the self-inflicted damage adds up to 94.

It was not the best day of Smith’s brief and otherwise promising Test career. In the morning, when England’s likeliest hope was one of his muscular cameos, he had been unable to impose himself on Pakistan’s spinners, adding just nine to his overnight 12 with barely a shot in anger.

Only a last-wicket stand of 29 between Leach and Bashir got England, resuming on 239 for six, as far as 291 – in all, a collapse of eight for 80.

But Smith’s drop was in a different category of aberration, the likes of which a Test wicketkeeper might make only two or three times in a long career. He barely had to move to hold on low to his left, but the ball still ricocheted out of his gloves. It was his worst moment yet behind the stumps.

‘I’m sure he’ll be disappointed, but he doesn’t show it,’ said assistant coach Paul Collingwood. ‘He never seems to change his demeanour at all, no matter what happens. To me, that’s a great trait.

‘With the dropped catches, it’s unusual to be standing so close to the bat. With these pitches, you’ve got to make sure the ball carries.’

Pakistan’s decision to play the second Test on the same pitch as the first might have been born of desperation, and betrayed their belief that they couldn’t compete with England on a more conventional surface. And, after picking only one seamer, the hosts gambled on winning the toss.

But it has all narrowed the gap between the sides, and produced a gripping Test match – more gripping, arguably, than last week’s first game, despite its welter of records.

‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it,’ said Collingwood of the pitch. ‘It’s a surprise that it’s happened, and a bit of a gamble from Pakistan’s point of view, because you’ve got to win the toss. It was a gamble they were willing to take.

‘We’ve got to be realistic. It’s going to be a tough chase on what is effectively the wicket’s ninth day. It’s doing plenty for the spinners, and there are lots of cracks. But this team’s capable of some special things, and it’s something we’ll relish.’

It was a decent example of Bazballian optimism, but there was no spinning the significance of Smith’s gaffe.