Well we hardly ever win at Lords. Just the name of the place inspires all the opposition. They all want to get their name on the boards for a century or a 5fer. Ntini even kissed the ground when he got his.
So what are the likely line ups? Strauss* Trescothick Cook Bell Pietersen Collingwood G Jones+ Plunkett Hoggard Harmison Panesar
Guessing a bit here... Imran Farhat Salman Butt Younis Khan Mohammad Yousuf Inzamam-ul-Haq Abdul Razzaq Kamran Akmal+ Mohammad Sami Umar Gul Shahid Nazir Danish Kaneria
Hoggard will be spending the next couple of days in an oxygen chamber to speed healing. We could end up with Harmison and Lewis opening the bowling and Plunkett and Collingwood as first change.
Butt Malik Younis Yousuf Inzy Afridi Razzaq Akmal Sami Gul Kaneria
I would seriosuly consider azhar mahmood and yasir arafat as late call ups to replace maybe afridi as sami and gul will have a big workload and any further injury would leave us desperately short in the seam bowling department and azhar mahmood is in decent touch while he would deepen the batting.
hopefully at the Oval tomorrow Azhar Mahmood will show he can do a job and convince Woolmer et al that he is worth a shout given how desperate we are.
I would not trust Shahid Nazir or Samiullah niazi making test debuts in foreign conditions sith no serious build up
Shame about all the injuries, this was shaping up to be a good series. Unless Danish causes big problems the proposed Pakistan attacks will struggle to take 20 wickets. Inzi, Yousuf and Younis will need to show a lot more than they did here in 2004/05 to give them a chance.
_____________________________________________ Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
