Pakistan vs England: Alastair Cook's side in perilous position at the end of day three

Pakistan 378, 222-3; England 242 - Batsmen look fallible again while Yasir works his magic before Pakistan’s senior statesmen show some maturity

England batsman Jonny Bairstow (Getty Images)

Everything looked swell for England. They arrived yesterday dreaming some of the bigger dreams. Sure, they were still behind – 196 runs behind – but that would all be rectified long before the end of the third day in the Second Test.

By then they would be ahead, perhaps by 150 runs. Their golden boy, Joe Root, would have reached the heights again, Pakistan would be a wicket or two to the bad in their second innings and the tourists heading for sunlit uplands if any such could be found in the sandy wastes hereabouts.

For 20 minutes it unfolded accordingly. Root looked like a million dollars and then some, Jonny Bairstow was clinging to his coat tails, touching the magic dust. Then it all went horribly, perhaps irrevocably wrong. Match and probably series were surrendered.

By the time the light closed in, England were desperate for the sanctuary of the dressing room. Instead of looking towards victory, they were facing the prospect of huge defeat. After subsiding to 242 all out, their last seven wickets tumbling for 36 runs within 18 overs, they are 358 behind, still needing to take seven of their opponents’ second-innings wickets.

The Pakistan veterans, Misbah-ul-Haq, the captain, and Younis Khan, have shared an almost seamless partnership of 139. Almost seamless because Misbah, on 56, was granted a life by the wicketkeeper Jos Buttler, who had a grim day among a welter of grim days and is fighting for his place.

If a single moment can determine the fate of any match played across five days, it was when Root, consummate until then in all he did but anxious to feel bat on ball, unleashed a drive to a fast ball outside off stump from Wahab Riaz that invited the shot. It was pouched gleefully by wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed.

Swell swiftly receded. Bairstow suddenly became the batting equivalent of a gibbering wreck, trying to hang on but not appearing to have a clue what his policy should be. The rest rendered passable impressions of English batting in Asian conditions from times past, which is to say inept and uncertain.

It did not help their intentions that Pakistan’s bowling was magnificent. The left-arm fast bowler Wahab produced a perpetually menacing spell which was invariably rapid and made the more worrisome for being accurate and containing reverse-swing in what looked to be at least two directions.

He bowled nine successive overs in searing, dry heat and never relented. At some point, England might have figured, Wahab would need a rest. Not until it was all but over, he didn’t. His figures for the morning were 9-5-15-3 and if the digit in the last column had been a six, no one could have complained.

Wahab was denied more wickets only by the man at the other end, Yasir Shah, the leg-spinner of whom much, maybe too much, was expected in this match. Having missed the First Test, in which Pakistan narrowly avoided defeat, Yasir took a little time to adjust his location finder on the second and third days here.

Once he did, he was irrepressible. He could have had Bairstow out three times. The review system bizarrely spared the batsman once because the replays were inconclusive, although the naked eye told only one story which was that Younis took a low catch well.

Bairstow kept cutting and Bairstow kept edging. It was a classic case of being all at sea in the desert. No one else was any more adept. Ben Stokes and Buttler stayed around long enough to confirm that the turning ball is not their forte, although poor Buttler is going through one of those wretched periods when any ball, fast, slow, short or full, might have his name on it.

England must not only contemplate but enact changes if they fail to get out of this, and Buttler would be near the top of any list of possible omissions. This is not to say that he will never come back, far from it, but the present trot is doing neither player nor team any good.

It may or may not be affecting his wicketkeeping but when he later spilled a reasonably regulation catch down the leg side, to which he got two gloves, the implication was obvious. It was merely re-emphasised when he failed to move for the edge off Misbah’s bat.

Buttler was ensnared by Wahab coming round the wicket, as was Stokes, but after Bairstow’s demise, Yasir accounted for Adil Rashid, playing a thoroughly dreadful shot, and Mark Wood, eventually adjudged caught at slip in circumstances which once more did no favours for the advent of technology.

The lead of 136 looked awesome if only because the highest winning fourth-innings score at the ground is 137. Given a sample of only eight matches this is probably misleading and England would doubtless have preferred to be reminded of the highest fourth-innings score, 343 for 3 in a drawn match.

They needed early incisions and made two. Buttler atoned slightly for his dropping of Mohammed Hafeez by catching Shan Masood off Jimmy Anderson, the fourth time in four innings that this batsman had been dismissed by this bowler during this series. Then Wood, like Wahab generating high pace, slipped one through Shoaib Malik’s flat-footed drive to leave Pakistan 16 for 2. When Wood found Hafeez’s edge and had him caught at slip, Pakistan were not quite out of sight on 83 for 3.

But Younis and Misbah changed that perspective during a late afternoon of effortlessly mature batting. Younis became the first Pakistani and the 14th of all batsmen to reach 9,000 Test runs and although he is 38 next month, he looks good enough for another 1,000 or so.

Of England’s bowlers, Wood was the most troublesome, Stokes was lively, Anderson induced caution. Both the spinners were innocuous but it should not be forgotten that this is Rashid’s first series. He must learn to offer more control but England must give him time.

Of more immediate concern is that too few of the batsmen are making a meaningful contribution. Since the start of the 2014 season, Root has scored almost 19 per cent of England’s runs and Cook now nearly 15 per cent. If they fail to increase this contribution today and in the next match, it is curtains in the UAE.