MULTAN: Pakistan play England in a three-Test series starting Monday in Multan with the visitors favorites to inflict more damage on a team mired in a painful losing streak.

England’s 3-0 whitewash on their last trip to Pakistan in 2022 was the first clean sweep by any visiting team to the country, and plunged the hosts into a slump that has left them winless in their last 10 home Tests.

The visitors will be buoyed by memories of that famous win, but begin the series without talismanic leader Ben Stokes, who will miss the first Test due to a hamstring injury.

While England sit in third place in the ICC Test rankings, five spots above Pakistan, they travel to South Asia with an inexperienced pace attack following the retirement of James Anderson and Stuart Broad.

Pakistan, meanwhile, are known for their unpredictability and will be desperate to wipe away the humiliation of a shock 2-0 defeat at the hands of low-ranked Bangladesh last month.

Captain Shan Masood, whose tenure has been marked by a run of five consecutive defeats, said his players were motivated to prove themselves.

“We took steps in the right direction in Australia despite losing, but we could not take them forward in the Bangladesh series,” Masood said this week.

“We are eager to stage a comeback in this important series.”

Pakistan cricket is flailing in all formats, with a revolving door of bosses and allegations of nepotism crushing the development of the nation’s most popular sport.

Superstar batsman Babar Azam relinquished the white-ball captaincy this week, saying he wanted to focus on his batting after a run-drought of 16 Test innings without a half-century.

The three Tests in Multan and Rawalpindi scheduled to wrap up on October 28 will be the first trial of the 29-year-old’s renewed commitment to his craft.

“We all know how good a player he is,” said Masood. “The good thing is that he is not out of form, and we can hope he is just one innings away from producing his best.”

While all eyes are on Azam to score big, Pakistan will hope pace spearheads Shaheen Shah Afridi -- who missed the 2022 Test with a knee injury -- and Naseem Shah can crack England’s robust batting order.

“We have told our fast bowlers that they are very important in taking 20 wickets,” said Masood.

Stokes will miss the first Test as he struggles to recover from a hamstring injury inflicted while playing for Northern Superchargers in The Hundred on August 11.

There are doubts over his return for the second match starting October 15, but England’s record has remained strong in his absence.

Top-order batter Ollie Pope led them to a 3-0 whitewash of the West Indies and a 2-1 win over Sri Lanka.

Two years ago, it was England’s batting that set the tone for the 3-0 victory on the very first day of the series, smashing 506-4 to set a new record for an opening day total in Tests.

Top batter Joe Root will also be eyeing the record books, needing just 71 runs to best Alastair Cook’s tally of 12,472, the most by any England batter.

Even without Stokes, England will have five pace bowlers led by fast-rising Gus Atkinson who has taken an impressive 34 wickets since his debut earlier this year. But the quintet will all be bowling for the first time in Pakistani conditions.

Experienced Jack Leach heads the spin attack, accompanied by Shoaib Bashir and Rehan Ahmed.

Harry Brook led the way with three hundreds in the 2022 series while Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett and Pope also feasted on slow and flat tracks.

“I know that Shan Masood has been asking for quicker, more lively wickets for their fast bowlers. Obviously last time we were there they were slow, dry and spun a bit,” Stokes said before arrival.

“So, we’ve got to go there with an open mind about what we’re going to get.”

ISLAMABAD: India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday he would not hold bilateral talks with Pakistan during his upcoming visit to Islamabad this month to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit.
His statement came only a day after the authorities in New Delhi announced his visit to Pakistan amid frosty relations between the two states to participate in the multilateral forum.
Pakistan had originally extended the invitation to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with other international leaders to attend the summit that will be held in Islamabad on October 15 and 16.
Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan will be the first by a high-ranking Indian minister in nearly a decade. The last one was Sushma Swaraj, who traveled to Islamabad in December 2015 to attend a conference on Afghanistan.
“It (visit) will be for a multilateral event,” India Today quoted him as saying. “I’m not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO.”
The Indian minister said Modi typically attended such high-level meetings involving heads of state, adding that the norm sometimes changes.
Relations between India and Pakistan hit a major low in 2019 when New Delhi revoked Article 370, which granted special autonomy to Muslim-majority state of Kashmir.
The South Asian neighbors have fought three wars, including two over control of the disputed Kashmir region in the Himalayas. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of aiding and abetting Islamist militants fighting Indian rule in the region, a charge Pakistan denies.
Last year in May, Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited India to attend an SCO meeting in Goa.
While Bhutto-Zardari did not meet any Indian leaders, he and Jaishankar used the forum to trade blame for their strained relations.

With input from Reuters.