Lord’s humbling should remind ECB that it is easier to sell a winning team | Vic Marks

England’s crushing defeat highlighted how the marginalisation of red-ball cricket in this country is damaging the development of Test players while Pakistan’s victory was a triumph

For the romantic rather than the English patriot, the Lord’s Test provided a wonderful outcome.

England were humbled by the pace trio of Mohammad Abbas, Hasan Ali and Mohammad Amir. Abbas is a former leather worker from Sialkot, who has been playing in the most uncharted domestic competition in the world for seven or eight years before an excursion as Leicestershire’s overseas player (maybe not the most glamorous of overseas gigs); Hasan’s parents wanted him to get a proper job as a lawyer so they apparently burned his cricket whites; Amir is the cricketing prodigal son, misled in his teens, who has tenaciously fought his way back into international cricket.

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