Abbas reached 900 first-class wickets at Lord’s, and England were 248 for 9 when the light went
Rain held the start up until 12.20pm, Mohammad Abbas and Mohammad Ali shared seven wickets, and England lost nine of them in 56 overs on the opening day of the second Test.
Aug 28, 2026
Babar Azam looked at the cloud sitting over Lord’s on Thursday, won the toss and put England in. Rain and a wet outfield held the start up until 12.20pm. By the time the umpires took the players off for bad light, England were 248 for 9 from 56 overs, and Pakistan had bowled themselves back into a series they were taken apart in a week earlier.
Abbas bowls the same ball, and it keeps working
Mohammad Abbas finished the day with 4 for 56 from 15 overs. Three of those came before lunch, by which stage he had 3 for 34 and England were 80 for 4.
Emilio Gay went first, caught down the leg side in the fifth over by Mohammad Rizwan, who was horizontal and at full stretch before the glove got there. Ten balls later Abbas had Ben Duckett lbw, though it took a review to get him. The umpire turned the appeal down, Babar sent it upstairs, and ball-tracking had it clipping the top of off. That wicket was Abbas’s 900th in first-class cricket, reached in his 222nd match.
Joe Root lasted 13 balls for 4. Abbas had already beaten him on the inside once, the ball squeezing past the pad and hitting the knee roll outside the line. Second time he pinned the back leg and got the finger. England were 36 for 3 inside 11 overs.
Mohammad Ali’s nip-backer accounted for three
The other end belonged to Mohammad Ali, who bowled the nip-backer three times and got a wicket with each of them. Harry Brook, England’s leading scorer in the innings win at Headingley, waved at the first of them and lost his off stump for 15. England were 77 for 4 in the 18th over.
Dan Lawrence made 17 and was run out for it. He pushed Ali Usman towards midwicket and set off, Jordan Cox sent him back, and Shan Masood threw to Rizwan with plenty of time to spare. It ended a stand of 43. Masood had put Lawrence down at midwicket when he was on 10 in the same partnership, which is the sort of afternoon Pakistan have been having.
Cox and Smith dragged England back to level
Jordan Cox is in his third Test and batting at No. 3 in it. He made 55 from 105 balls with seven fours, reaching it with back-to-back boundaries off Usman, and it is now two fifties in consecutive Test innings after his 73 at Headingley. It was not a fluent innings and it did not need to be. England had lost four wickets for 77 and somebody had to stay in.
Jamie Smith joined him and scored much faster than the conditions suggested was sensible. He was on 15 when Rizwan put down an edge off Ali that a keeper of his standard takes most days. The pair put on 67 for the sixth wicket, 60 of them in 77 balls before tea, and Smith went to the interval on 44 from 53. He finished with 61 off 80 with ten fours.
Cox went at 187, caught at second slip by a man who is not in Pakistan’s XI. Salman Ali Agha captained the side at Headingley and made way for Babar’s return, and he was on as a substitute fielder when Cox drove loosely at Khurram Shahzad. Agha sprang high to his right, took it one-handed, twisted in the air and held on through the landing.
Ali came back and bowled Smith through a drive, then had Ollie Robinson two balls later with one that came back sharply and went through the defence. Two wickets in three balls, England 222 for 8, and the day had turned again.
Jofra Archer hit Abbas over long-off for six, tried the same shot again and was bowled for 14. Gus Atkinson was 34 not out off 27 with five fours when the light went just before 6.10pm, with just under an hour and a half of the day still available. Stumps was called just after 6.30pm. Pakistan were content enough with that: one more England wicket and they would have been facing the new ball in the gloom themselves.
Where the series stands
England lead 1-0. Pakistan lost inside three days at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs, were bowled out for 171 and 135 there, and sit ninth of nine in the World Test Championship table. Thursday was the first day of the tour that looked like a contest.
They also gave away 22 extras, ten of them no-balls, with Khurram Shahzad and Ali responsible for five apiece. That is 22 of England’s 248 that arrived without anyone hitting the ball, on a pitch where runs off the bat were hard to come by. Pakistan need one more wicket on Friday, and then they have to do the thing this tour has told us they cannot do, which is bat.