England must think positive

First the good news. When Pakistan won the toss in the first Test at Multan, they limped to 244 for 6 at the close of the first day, and still recovered to win a thrilling match with more than a session-and-a-half-to-spare. For England, so palpably desperate to draw level in this series and preserve a two-year unbeaten run, this can only be a good omen. Presumably.

A positive mental attitude is one of the hallmarks of this side, but they'll need a dose of spin above and beyond what was served up to them today to glean any advantage from the day's events. By the close they had reached an identically frail 248 for 6, having self-destructed in a rash of post-lunch sweep shots to give the offspinner, Shoaib Malik, the flattering figures of 3 for 58 in 14 probing but hardly penetrative overs.

"They are 1-0 down in the series so they need to take chances and up their rate of scoring," was Shoaib's succinct summary at the close of play. And granted, with only 77 overs possible in spite of the use of floodlights, advancing the game is by and large in England's interests. But this method is not exactly what the team think-tank would have had in mind.

The probability that England would take a few risks in this match had been built up in the media beforehand, but officially the team was having none of it. Michael Vaughan brushed the notion aside at his pre-match press conference, justifiably pointing out that a run-rate of three-and-a-half an over, as England have managed all series, was a fair enough clip in itself.

When Marcus Trescothick took 27 balls to get off the mark, en route to a finely crafted fifty and a hugely encouraging century opening stand, it seemed England had set off in the opposite direction entirely. The patient approach reaped its rewards as the shine went off the new ball - and in the second hour of the morning they hurtled along at almost four an over, with Vaughan in particular assuming complete command of the situation.

For Vaughan, it was as if he had never been away. Thirty-one of his previous 63 Tests had been as an opener, and a tally of 10 hundreds and an average of 49.70 was testament to a job well done. In theory, his recent presence in the middle order has lent an air of senior-player gravitas to an unproven line-up, but Vaughan the batsman has never been about gravity. He is a dasher, a chancer, a counter-attacker and, as he showed with a couple of sumptuous pulls and drives, there is nothing he enjoys more than a new ball on a flashing blade.

Sadly, there is also nothing he is more prone to doing than giving it away when well set, and his lame paddle to square leg just moments after the post-lunch resumption set the tone for the rest of the innings. If Trescothick was unfortunate, edging a sweep onto his toes, then Ian Bell, Geraint Jones and Andrew Flintoff had no such alibis. Suddenly it was Rawalpindi, Bagh-e-Jinnah, Multan and Faisalabad revisited. Four matches, four floundering middle-orders, two defeats, no lessons learned.

Only the painstakingly diligent Paul Collingwood remained. By producing an innings for himself first and foremost, he served the team admirably as a side effect. But he'll need to go big tomorrow morning, with Shaun Udal for company, if England are to make a virtue of the hasty approach they have adopted. A score of 300-plus is not necessarily self-defeating, especially given the chinks in Pakistan's top-order. But they'll need to bowl their socks off while the pitch is still true if they are to prevent Inzamam-ul-Haq from making them pay.

England's last series defeat, as everyone must now be well aware, came in Sri Lanka two years ago, in the days when the team was a far less self-assured unit. After losing the toss in the first two matches, they were playing not so much "catch-up" as "cling-on" cricket, as they twice defied Muttiah Muralitharan to secure improbable draws.

At the third attempt, they won the toss and went for the jugular by batting first, but were clothes-lined as they did so, tumbling recklessly to 259 for 8 at the close of the first day's play. From there, the only way was further down, all the way down to an innings-and-215-run defeat, in fact - their third-heaviest in Test history.

Now that's what I call an omen. As England have learned to their cost, in Colombo as at Multan, it doesn't pay to get ahead of yourselves when playing Test cricket on the subcontinent. There are traps waiting to be sprung at every turn of every session.