Anderson gets an early wicket. It looks like this game will be all over today.

Raining and off they come

Hopefully it's just a passing shower

Not a hope. This is Lancashire, and it's the start of our 12-month rainy season.

(Might be a gap later this afternoon to get restarted though!)

Play restarting now with lunch put back to 1.30😄

76/6 with the long tail after these 2

Attendance looks a little disappointing today. Pakistan may not be the attraction that Australia are but they are still a decent side.

Moeen to bowl. This'll be interesting. Good luck to him.

And he gets Misbah!

Listening to TMS and Aggers reckons that Cook has decided to bat again

Hope not

not showing alot of faith in his bowlers if he is worried about batting last if pakistan manage to score 400+ in their second innings

i'm all for managing a bowlers workload but they have only bowled 63 overs here and there is a 2 week gap til the next test

edit : all out and he is not enforcing the follow-on

Can understand the decision to bat.

No rain forecast and plenty of time left in the game. 60+ overs in the bowlers legs and you can't count on your spinner to hold up an end and eat up overs to give the quicks a rest.

Bit of a strange decision not to enforce the follow-on. Maybe just so they can have some slogging practice while the bowlers have rest of a couple of hours.

It makes sense to bat. It's what I would have done.

With 2 whole days and little rain, might as well get the bowlers nice and fresh for the final innings.

Purely to give the likes of Hales some time in the middle.

Strange decision not to enforce the follow-on. Could have won the game today. Perhaps Cook has been told to stretch the game out so Old Trafford doesn't miss out on ticket sales! The only reason is to give Vince and Ballance a final opportunity to save their Test careers.

we keep getting told they are fitter than they have ever been before and because of the rain delay they haven't really had one full session in the field yet

we'll win the match regardless from this position, i just think batting again is a negative decision

Nothing strange about it at all. It's quite common not to enforce follow-ons when there's loads of time left in a match.

Anderson's getting on a bit and has recently had an injury. Why not let him have a rest?

Why is it so great to Bat Again, we are nearly 400 runs ahead.

Wish we had someone like Morgan or a more imaginative Captain in charge of the test team, rather negative Cook.

I thought we were meant to be encouraging people to watch it or get involved, they are going to be thinking why are they batting again.

Very negative to bat again.

I assume we'll declare before close of play when we have a 500 run lead.

People love to moan. England having a great test match and they are getting pelters in here. Now we've even had a call for Cook to be sacked as captain

I couldn't agree more. It's an absurd decision to bat again. At very least, they could be sending in Hales and someone else who could biff it about or Vince/Ballance for some time in the middle. But no, Cook sends himself in...

nah if they have decided to bat again i would think they will declare about 30 mins before lunch tomorrow , gives the bowlers overnight to rest and then you still have 5+ sessions to bowl pakistan out again with hopefully a lead close to 600

I suspect a quick 100-150 before declaring with 30 mins before close.

if the point of batting again is to give the bowlers a rest i dont see the point in just letting them have 2 hours with their feet up when they can bat on til tomorrow, let them have the full night to rest and then still have plenty of time

if we cant bowl them out in 5 sessions declaring around lunch tomorrow then they dont deserve to win anyway