A traditionally hostile match-up is shaping up to be a little warmer thanks to the tourists answering the ECB’s call
A friend asked what hooliganism, depression, rickets and economic stagnation have in common. His answer was that at different times they have all been known overseas as “the English disease”. The odd thing was that superciliousness wasn’t among them, too. The first time
Pakistan came to play in
Britain, their players were surprised to find that a lot of English people didn’t even know their country existed. The team didn’t bring an official scorer or a single radio or newspaper journalist, but were accompanied by an official from the Pakistan High Commission, whose
Job it was to tell the people they met exactly which nation they were there representing.
This was in 1954, seven years after partition. It was a wet summer, and the first and third Tests were washed out. In between,
England won the second by an innings and 129 runs. “To say the plain truth the Pakistani team could scarcely hold its own in the English county
Cricket championship,” wrote Neville Cardus afterwards. In the Guardian, Denys Rowbotham reckoned this was too generous. He said Pakistan were “scarcely minor counties standard”. In the fourth and final Test, Fazal Mahmood took 12 for 99, England were bowled out for 130 and 143, and Pakistan won by 24 runs.