woakes gets his michelle and we are into the tail

hopefully can knock them over for 350ish

edit : and he gets wahab riaz second ball for his 6th

be interesting to see how Amir bats, spent a lot of time in the nets/practising batting during his ban, but of course didn't face too many quick or good bowlers during his time off.

now england have to face Amir in good bowling conditions should be a good day of cricket.

perfect start to the day for england at least

A question about the Cricket World Cup in 2019. Will the ICC yet teams like Ireland play in the competition or are they still looking at a 10 team world cup

10 man competition with 8 team automatically qualifying with Ireland in competition with Zimbabwe and one of Ban, pak, WI and the rest of the associates.

hales goes cheaply, important partnership for england now.
if root or cook goes vince, ballance have to face a gun pakistan bowling attack.

Hales gone early. He did well v Sri Lanka but this is a different proposition....

Root in at 3 as expected....

Looks like cook wants to get back in the odi/t20 team after this start.

he does this every so often , goes off like a train and then after he gets to 20odd settles back to his usual pace

wonder if its maybe nerves that means he plays at more early sometimes

Cook now dropped by hafeez.

Very quick start from england here.
going above a run a ball in a test match.

why are the boundaries 25M in at lords.

Because Hikel Moulding says so !

England scoring quickly and looks like they might get the 100 up before losing 4 or 5 wickets as is the norm.

With our middle and lower order a top 5 that gets 250 runs would see us almost unbeatable.

We'd be scoring 600 every innings.......

When a dolly catch is put down off the bowling of Amir... the mind can't help but remember a few things...

Cook dropped again ........this time a straightforward one to the keeper

riding his luck but he's got to 56

Joe you plonker

another failure for vince, he will be under pressure soon, especially if ballance scores runs and they have to fit stokes back in

So out of our top five only Cook and Root get decent scores.

I think all three will have to do better in the second innings.

What is good that, unlike Sri Lanka, we have a decently poised game which can go either way.

So which player would be dropped now for stokes, Ballance or Vince.

In my opinion both should not even be in the team, ballance didn't deserve a call up and vince just hasn't done well in test cricket.

Seeing as Jason Roy bats 4 or 5 at times for Surrey in the County Championship I wonder if he can be given a go there for England.

roy has improved his technique alot over the last year but still not sure i would be too comfortable seeing him in the test side

bit of a collapse here , lost 4 wickets for just 58 runs

Blimey whatever happened to people getting a try in the team ? Vince is still inexperienced. Ballance averages over 47. now that is not bad. Ok, he got out cheaply but its not like he is on a run of bad scores, just come back, or has a terrible average.

If Vince fails in the next innings he should be the one to make way for Stokes. Move Bairstow to 4, Stokes at 5 and Ballance at 6. But I do like Vince, he is a good player.