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England closed day two of the first Test at Headingley on 366 for 8, a lead of 195, after Harry Brook fell for 91 in a second successive failed bid for a hundred on his home ground. Jordan Cox made 73 and Joe Root 66 in a 150-run stand. Ali Usman, Pakistan’s only specialist spinner, took 5 for 92 for his maiden Test five-wicket haul.
Leeds, England: Four batters got in. None got the hundred. And the one man who ended the day with anything to show for it was playing for the side being ground into the turf.
Rain wiped out the morning entirely, and play did not begin until four hours into the day. When it did, the cloud cover over Headingley was heavy enough to promise seam bowlers everything. Pakistan got almost nothing from it.
Root and Cox Go in Five Balls
Resuming on 112 for 2, Joe Root and Jordan Cox extended their partnership to 150 without ever being seriously troubled. Pakistan’s bowling was wayward, leaked boundaries, and built no pressure worth the name — and then produced two wickets in the space of five deliveries anyway.
ALSO READ: Robinson and Tongue share ten as Pakistan collapse for 171 on rain-hit Headingley opener
Ali Usman, coming round the wicket, found drift and grip to take Cox’s edge as the batter stepped across his stumps to feel for the ball. Cox went for 73 and reviewed a delivery he had plainly nicked. Four balls later Khurram Shahzad, from wide on the crease, swung one back late to trap Root plumb in front for 66. Root reviewed too, equally hopelessly. England had gone from 198 for 2 to 202 for 4.
Brook’s Second Near-Miss in Two Summers
Harry Brook and Dan Lawrence rebuilt with 120 from 151 balls, and for a while it looked like the day’s anticlimax would be avoided.
Brook made 91 from 93 balls — an innings more measured than that scoring rate suggests, and one that began with a life when Salman Ali Agha put him down at second slip. Having just reclaimed top spot in the world Test batting rankings, and with the Yorkshire crowd waiting on three figures, he misread one of Ali Usman’s left-armers and was bowled via a flick off the pad. He flung his head back. It was the second year running he has fallen short of a hundred at Headingley, after 99 against India last summer.
Lawrence, playing his first Test in two years, made 51 — a fifth Test half-century and his first since March 2022. He fell top-edging a slog-sweep high to square leg, where Mohammad Rizwan came racing out from behind the stumps to take a simple catch.
Ali Usman Gets What the Day Owed Him
The 5 for 92 was the one genuinely uplifting thing to happen to Pakistan all day. Nobody who watched the morning’s downpour would have predicted a five-wicket haul from the tourists’ lone specialist spinner, and he struck twice more before the close to complete it. His celebration was closer to relief than triumph — reward, finally, for a long day’s work.
Around him, Khurram Shahzad finished with 1 for 111 — a set of figures that captures the wider Pakistani performance rather better than Ali Usman’s do.
Where the Match Stands
England closed on 366 for 8, Jamie Smith unbeaten on 16 and Jofra Archer yet to score. The lead is 195 with two wickets in hand.
Given how Pakistan batted on the opening day — 171 all out, five-fors for both Ollie Robinson and Josh Tongue — England may well only need to bat once. The tourists have three days to find something they have not yet shown in this match.
Stumps, Day 2: England 366/8 (Brook 91, Cox 73, Root 66, Lawrence 51; Ali Usman 5-92, Khurram Shahzad 1-111) lead Pakistan 171 (Abdullah Shafique 61, Imam-ul-Haq 42; Josh Tongue 5-46, Ollie Robinson 5-51) by 195 runs
