Skipping a beat

There's been a strange rhythm throughout this series. For passages, it has resembled Test match cricket as we now know it, mostly when Shahid Afridi, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen have been at the crease. In patches it has regressed to Test match cricket as we knew it, as it did on the first day of the series at Multan. Today, in contrast, seemed to have no beat, no pattern to it at all.

The cricket was pure staccato. In the morning, Marcus Trescothick struggled to get off the mark for 27 balls as Shoaib Akhtar and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan bowled constricting spells. England scored at barely three runs an over in the first hour, but then in the ten overs till lunch, they scored at over four. Three wickets after lunch slowed proceedings, before Kevin Pietersen again upped the tempo till his dismissal on the stroke of tea. After it, they lost more wickets and the pace again slackened. As if to confirm the nature of the day, Pakistan sprightly bowled 14 overs in the first hour, but then by the end, half an hour short of the scheduled close of 5pm, they were somehow still 13 overs short. It was that sort of day.

And yet Pakistan will look back on it with some pride, testament one-third to their perseverance and two-thirds to England's stupendously amateurish batting. Even the pitch played unsurely, deceptively; it wasn't as easy as many believed initially. Shoaib Malik, somehow a fitting surprise performer for the day, said it was soft and Paul Collingwood said they didn't expect that amount of turn on the first day.

What was consistent, at least, was the collective commitment from Pakistan's attack and their discipline. Although all six wickets were gifted to Pakistan - it can be argued that Andrew Flintoff at least was the victim of some plan - the most refreshing aspect was that between them, in 77 overs, four bowlers (excluding Danish Kaneria) with a history of no-balls, bowled only three, part of only five extras that were conceded throughout the day. Everyone did pretty much what was expected of them and if Shoaib didn't get his expected rewards, then Malik balanced it by picking up three unexpected wickets.

On a day like this, when no one stands out, thoughts wander to those men who are only noticed when they err. Kamran Akmal quietly confirmed himself in the last year as one of the best young keepers in the game. Equally quietly in this series, he has slipped just a touch, most emphatically in his display in Faisalabad where he missed a regulation -and costly - stumping of centurion Ian Bell in the first innings. A couple of other fluffs followed and when he dropped a thin edge from Trescothick early this morning, suddenly Moin Khan's rousing double century in a domestic game today took deeper meaning.

But over a whole day of no byes and two moments of athletic gold, Akmal showed just why Ian Healy rated him so highly last year in Australia. Trescothick's wicket should actually be credited to Akmal. Not only had he to anticipate that there was a chance off the boot, he had to move first across and then round the back of the stumps, only to still dive forward, literally at the batsman's feet to pouch the ball, full-stretch, in his left glove. The second, to dismiss Pietersen, was regulation only in comparison but lacked nothing in agility and speed of action. The smooth roll after he had caught it in his left hand was the wicketkeeper's equivalent of a batsman's drive on bended knee; flourish and posed but skilled nonetheless.

The other men whose blunders we notice, of course, are those in white. Generally, there is little point to talk of umpiring blemishes but sometimes, if aligned with an attitudinal observation, some criticism can be poked. Darrell Hair's officiating in Faisalabad teetered between the officious and the obtuse. At times, it seemed rejecting appeals was foregone, no matter the validity. Pakistan, and particularly Kaneria, don't endear themselves to umpires with their appealing - and it can be excessive - but that shouldn't affect the way any appeal is treated.

In Faisalabad, Hair erred on numerous occasions. He was one of the culprits in the Inzamam run-out, but was also involved in the Salman Butt fracas. Butt claimed Hair hadn't spoken to him before warning him about running on the pitch and with one of those warnings, Hair appeared too eager to see an indiscretion where there wasn't one. When Inzamam later swept and then ran halfway down the pitch for the first of his three runs, beguilingly no word came from Hair.

He missed a Collingwood inside edge today and coupled with Rudi Koertzen appearing to premeditate his rejections of appeals reasonable, plumb, ridiculous or otherwise, it was understandable why some journalists, foreign and local, were bemused at the day's end to put it mildly.

Although not similar in feel, the day held a remarkable parallel to the opening day of this series in Multan. Pakistan, not England, seemingly frittered away the advantage of the toss then and ended the first day on 244 for 6. We thought then that a pattern had been set for the match and were proved wrong. To do so again after the first day in Lahore would be loaded with similar implications. Eleven days on, four days to go, this series is still far from over.