A strange thing happened in Multan, and I’m not talking about the deployment of giant fans to dry out an already used pitch. No, instead Ollie Pope scored 29 and 22, as if laughing in the face of those who pigeon-hole him as an all-or-nothing kind of guy.
And yet those scores, while closer to nothing than to all, almost felt more of a concern than a pair of outright failures: 29 and 22 are not, we had been assured, Pope territory. Once he’s through those early moments – as jumpy and twitchy as a new-born lamb, the bowlers on red alert – that’s when he makes opponents pay.
England, it should be said from the outset, are not about to drop Pope. He has averaged 42 from No 3 in the Bazball era, and always seems able to wave evidence of a big innings from the not-too-distant past in the face of his detractors.