Why England will be VERY happy with a huge development ahead of second Test against Pakistan… while captain Ben Stokes in line to make long-awaited return to the team

Tuesday’s second Test in Multan looks set to take place on the same pitch which produced a sensational innings win for England on Friday – with Ben Stokes in line to return for his first game since July.

No one could recall if England had ever played successive Tests on the same surface – not least with only three free days between games.

But the Pakistan board’s Australian groundsman Tony Hemming had set up giant fans at each end of the pitch in a bid to dry it out after heavy watering, and all the indicators were that it would be used once more.

ICC playing regulations do not exclude such a scenario, with the rubric stating: ‘It is expected that venues that are allocated the responsibility of hosting a match will present the best possible pitch and outfield conditions for that match.’

Problems would emerge only if the pitch proves substandard, with the spinners potentially coming into play on what, from day one, will in effect be a sixth-day pitch – despite some irritable body language from Pakistan’s head coach Jason Gillespie as he surveyed the surface on Sunday morning.

Brendon McCullum’s side won by an innings and 47 runs after an absurd first innings of 823/7

Another added boost for England is the imminent return of skipper Ben Stokes from injury

Since Jack Leach took seven wickets during the first Test, outperforming every other slow bowler in the game, that ought not to bother England – especially with Pakistan’s first-choice spinner Abrar Ahmed still in hospital with dengue fever.

In a further complication, no one can yet rule out the possibility that the third Test – starting on October 24 – will also take place in Multan because of political unrest in Rawalpindi caused by the continued incarceration of the country’s former prime minister and cricket captain Imran Khan.

Stokes, meanwhile, bowled with real energy in a voluntary England net session attended by only a handful of players. If, as expected, he returns after shaking off his hamstring injury, it would probably be in place of Chris Woakes.

The skipper spent much of the first Test quite literally on the periphery, walking round the boundary with bottles of drink. 

If and when he does bowl, it is likely to be against a Pakistan side without their star batsman and former captain Babar Azam, who was reported by local media to have been dropped from the side after failing to reach 50 in his last 18 Test innings, including scores of 30 and five against England last week.

Attack leader Shaheen Shah Afridi could also miss out because of fitness concerns.

England will hope to replicate their heroics of the first Test after they became the first team in 147 years of the game’s oldest and greatest format had an innings victory been achieved by a team conceding a first-innings total of 500 or more.

The victory was littered with other substantial feats as Joe Root passed Alastair Cook’s England runs record, Harry Brook scored their first Test triple since Graham Gooch in 1990, and a total of 823 for seven – made at almost five and a half an over, for goodness’ sake – was the fourth-highest in any Test.