Key events
Joe Root needs 38 more runs to overtake Alastair Cook as the highest scoring Englishman in Tests, a few more to overtake Sachin Tendulkar.
With ten minutes to go before we start, time for me to make a quick cup of tea. Do send me a message if you’re awake and staring into the blackness, on tanya.aldred.freelance@guardian.co.uk. The pitch, says Athers, is still full of runs.
Simon Burnton
The sightscreens are a curious feature of this ground. There are big screens at each end that show a series of ads for sponsors, but the whitest white they can muster isn’t very white, so for them to function as sightscreens whenever the bowler is running in from their end a sheet is pulled over them using an ingenious pulley system which requires four people at each end – three to pull the pulleys and another to spot when it’s time to pull, plus a fifth to drape more sheets over the boundary hoardings. Seems an extraordinarily work-intensive solution, but it works
Duckett is fit
Simon Burnton
“I can tell you that Ben Duckett is playing Pig, the team’s morning keepy-uppy game, and has no sign of strapping on his left hand, so that’s positive, right? And official word is dribbling through now – he’s good to go.”
And good news from our man on the ground Simon Burnton…
Some pretty skies from Multan last night:
It is currently 29 degrees in Multan, feeling more like 31 degrees, and the air quality is “unhealthy”: 170 US AQI – or 16 times the reccommmended WHO level.
Preamble
Good morning! It’s hot, it’s dry and it’s day three in Multan, where Pakistan piled up 556 to a largely empty stadium, England sweated, dropped a couple of catches, Chris Woakes’ big boot caught on the boundary rope and Ben Duckett dislocated his thumb.
Salman Agha’s hundred from No. 8 frustrated England, but not as much as Duckett’s dodgy digit, which left Ollie Pope to open with sub-optimal results. Crawley and Root though smoothed the troubled waters with an unbroken stand of 92 at a fair lick.
So now we get to see whether the pitch stays as flat and crushingly unfriendly for bowlers as it was for the first two days, or whether the cracks have yawned and stretched to add a little spice . Play starts at 6amBST, do keep us company.
