3rd Test: England v Pakistan at Edgbaston

103 runs lead now cleared

0 - 0 

The ebbs and flows of Test match cricket are what makes it such a beautiful game. Yesterday evening, England were down and out. Today, they will be the happier of the two sides.

It was about as a good a day as possible for England. The seamers were very good, and then backed up by Cook and Hales at the top of the order. Cook has looked in serious form this summer.

Hales with a determined 50. He was in full on concentration mode, leaving anything outside off, and playing with a much straighter bat. It is, however, worth noting that he was chosen in part to open with Cook to be the aggressive partner. As it turns out, Cook has been the dasher in their partnership. In their 19 innings opening the batting, Cook has a strike-rate of 56.36, while Hales is at 45.16. Nasser made a great observation during the broadcast that Hales gets bogged down for long periods as he is so determined on not getting himself out that he has no release shot to rotate the strike, but then he goes through spurts where he hits 3 or 4 boundaries in quick succession.

Watching Sohail Khan bowl at the end was painful. Every joint and muscle in his body was barking. He was moving ever so gingerly, the rigours of not playing a Test match in almost 5 years.

Well, that escalated quickly! After saying that England would do well to save the game, it now looks like the shoe is on the other foot and it's Pakistan that are going to be struggling to get anything out of it, and who would have thought that at the start of the days play.

With England winning so convincingly in the last test match, if they now go on to win this one after being in the position they was then I think that the morale of Pakistan will take another massive knock.

According to WinViz, the draw is still the overwhelming favourite result.

Cook goes very early this morning to a fantastic catch from Yasir. Pakistan have their tails up.

That didn't take long. Cook and now Hales removed in quick succession.

Hales gets fishing, gets an edge and England are effectively 23/2. England wobbling. Plenty of ebbs and flows still left in this one.

England lead by 80 at lunch with 8 wickets in hand. A gritty partnership building between Root and Vince, but it has been slow going. Pakistan's seamers have hidden the ball out wide of off stump, tempting England to risk nicking off. Sky put up a great graphic that emphasised just how wide Pakistan's seamers have bowled this morning - not one delivery to the right-handed batsmen would have gone on to hit the stumps.

Of concern for England is Joe Root's back which appears to have flared up again.

Would 220 be enough in the 4th innings at Edgbaston?

Lead is now 236

Jonny 50*

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Current partnership  57 runs, 12.3 overs, RR: 4.56 (Ali 18, Bairstow 38)