Two Collapses, One Cause: England Have No Wicket-Taking Weapon at the Death

The number on the board in Lahore that night was entirely ordinary — 154/9. I was watching a buffering stream on a laptop at a quarter past midnight in Bangalore. Nine wickets had gone, 88 runs were needed, one wicket remained. I closed my notebook. After more than fifty years of watching this game, a habit has formed: when the end looks settled, put the pen down. I was certain the end had been settled.

What happened was the exact opposite of that certainty. Shadab Khan and Haris Rauf added 89 together for the last wicket without being parted, and Pakistan won a match in which they had been reduced to 154/9. Within three days England took a second blow — another match in which, according to the report, they posted more than four hundred and lost that too. The figure comes from the original report and still requires scorecard confirmation; a total that size is either a record-level anomaly or a transcription error, and nothing should be built on it before it is verified.

This is not a lament for one defeat. It is about a pattern that appeared twice in three days, and which will be buried under the easiest available label: a weakness of mentality.

Context: a tri-series that calls itself a classroom for the World Cup

England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are playing an ODI tri-series in Pakistan. The surfaces at Rawalpindi and Lahore rank among the flattest in the subcontinent — new ball or old, the batter can predict bounce and pace with ease. With a World Cup in southern Africa roughly twelve months away, England are treating this tour not as a test of results but as a preparation camp. Liam Dawson framed it that way himself — this competition is preparation.

The language of preparation carries a convenience: a defeat can be called a process. It also carries a risk — if you deliberately withhold your biggest asset and then lose precisely because of that absence, the process starts sending you a bill. England's qualification is no longer in their own hands. They need Pakistan to beat Sri Lanka, and they need a large win themselves, which means net run rate. This is the position in which a team loses control of its own fate and starts over-weighing every over of the final match.

The selection rationale was stated plainly as well: on the conditions at Rawalpindi and Lahore, Dawson's skiddy slow left-arm spin was preferred to Adil Rashid. That reasoning is coherent in its own terms. On a flat deck a skiddy left-arm spinner denies batters pace and starves them of patience, forcing errors through the absence of speed. It is containment bowling.

Core: two kinds of collapse, one root

Look at the two defeats and two different stories appear. In one, a side defends a total and loses a match that dragged to the ninth wicket. In the other, it makes more than four hundred and cannot defend that either. On the surface these are separate failures. Deeper down they emerge from the same place: the attack has no high-percentage wicket-taking option — no express pace, no mystery spinner. The report says this directly, and the inexperience of the bowling unit is mentioned alongside it.

The 154/9 situation is the most diagnostic scene of the series. A ninth-wicket pair needs 88 with one wicket left. In that situation a specialist death bowler is held back for exactly that moment. England did not have that option, so they had to hope the batter would make a mistake, or that a run-out would arrive. In cricket that is not a strategy, it is waiting. And when the last-wicket stand reaches record proportions, the meaning is clear — against a side that cannot take wickets, batters at nine, ten and eleven play without fear. In my experience death-over failure looks like this: fast, dramatic, and easily covered up by the excuse of a single catch or a single over.

The real question here is Rashid. He is 26 dismissals away from becoming England's all-time leading ODI wicket-taker. Being that close means, by definition, that he has taken wickets in volume over a long period. He is fit. He is available. Yet he was overlooked for two matches. On Sky Sports, Nasser Hussain's assessment was that his performances have dropped off. I am not disputing that assessment — I am saying two different things have been merged inside it. Economy and wicket-taking are not the same thing. A bowler 26 wickets from a national record does not have a wicket-taking question against his name; he may have an economy question, a question about control in subcontinental conditions. And the rationale England gave was a control argument, not a wicket argument.

This is where the logic breaks. To leave out your best wicket-taking spinner on condition grounds in the very two matches you lose for want of wickets is a contradiction, and the report leaves it standing. Dawson's skiddy left-arm spin is a defensive ball on a flat pitch. But when the batter at the other end is a No. 11 who only has to survive, defence has no meaning — you need attack. The selection asked the right question about conditions and the wrong question about the match.

At Derby I found the story hiding beneath the word count. The same is happening here. The story in the headlines — who won, who lost, who said what — is not the story. The story is that Dawson is 36, and that Rashid moves into his late thirties after this series. If the World Cup spin plan rests on a 36-year-old left-arm spinner and a leg-spinner who will be 38 or 39 by then, the succession question has been deferred, not answered.

Dawson's career path is itself a document of this era. He has retired from first-class cricket. Even with a new head coach arriving, he has shut the Test door firmly. In T20 he is an established figure under Harry Brook, and his ODI involvement is growing. This is the franchise-era specialist model — the lowest workload, the highest availability. It brings freshness, availability, no red-ball load. It also brings risk: no red-ball conditioning, and a skillset tuned for containment rather than for attack.

Contrarian: this is not a story about mentality

The easiest conclusion will be that twice surrendering a winning position in three days is a failure of nerve. In fifty years of watching, I have found that to be the most expensive mistake available, because it sends the remedy in the wrong direction. The mentality story produces team meetings, speeches and 'confidence'. The capability story produces a bowler who can take a wicket in a pressure over. The second story is less attractive and harder to accept.

Dawson said afterwards that the last two games were 'a massive positive as a group' because England were in positions where they should have won. The sentence can sound honest, and perhaps it is. But losing twice in three days from winning positions is not evidence of positivity — it is evidence of a pattern. And Dawson, who has played 165 ODIs, knows the difference perfectly well. He was also right about Rashid — you do not play 165 ODIs and become a bad bowler. That is a genuine and necessary defence of a teammate. It is also a shield: the line stops Dawson's own strong performances from being turned into a weapon against Rashid. Reading it as mere politeness understates him.

One more thing stays out of the headlines, and it is easy to dismiss as Pakistan's good fortune — the depth of the lower order. Brisbane taught me to watch the second XI warm up. A team that does not capitulate mentally at 154/9 does not hold on by accident. That is a property of how the side is built, and on flat subcontinental pitches that property changes results.

At Lord's in 2026 I had a notebook, a deadline and a quieter truth — what the scoreboard shows is never the whole truth. Here too, 154/9 and a total above four hundred are the scoreboard's story. The notebook's story is this: batting is not England's problem. They made 242 and they made more than four hundred — runs are being produced. The deficit is in one place only, the ability to take wickets at the death. That is good news, because the remedy is selection and recruitment rather than a rebuild. It is also bad news, because selection is easy — if you are willing to admit your largest weakness.

The year the noise stopped, I heard the game breathe. The noise of a flat pitch is that it slows the bowler, takes away his fear, makes the batter bold. On such a pitch a containing spinner looks like the right pick, because he stops runs. But the same pitch also demands wickets, and that demand went unmet. I have learned to trust the hush before the first ball — and in Lahore that night the hush was telling us three overs early that England had no plan left.

Takeaway

Thursday's match will now answer several questions at once, and none of them is only about the points table. If Rashid returns, the selection panel has read two matches as a lesson. If he sits out again and England win, the success will cover a question that returns with the first defeat of the World Cup.

In a cricket where runs are easiest to make, matches are won with wickets. England's selection structure has not yet agreed with that sentence. The real test of this tour is not whether England qualify — it is whether the team accepts that its largest deficit is not mental. Two collapses in three days do not make history. But losing twice through the same door in three days says a great deal.