Joe Root was on 23, England were 36 for two and chasing 130 in the final Test at Edgbaston when an expansive cover drive crashed into his leg stump. Mohammad Ali was already running away in celebration before he turned around to see the umpire’s arm stretched out for a front-foot no-ball. It was his 17th such offence in the series, but the first one that had cost him a wicket. England would have been 36 for three; instead, they won the match by eight wickets and completed a 3-0 sweep over Pakistan.There was something fitting about the way the series ended. Pakistan lost a wicket on the first ball of the series and, on the last ball, misfielded as England completed the whitewash. In between, there had been three Tests in which Pakistan rarely looked competitive, often looked unprepared and, by the end, barely resembled (literally) the team that had landed in England.
Pakistan’s Mohammad Ali bowls out England’s Joe Root before it is ruled out due to a no ball delivery during third Test at Edgbaston Cricket Ground
Less than 24 hours after Pakistan’s heavy defeat in the second at Lord’s had sealed the series for England, the PCB announced that seven players had been axed from the Test squad. Quietly tucked into the final line of the statement was the news that head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed, who had been in the job for only five games, had also been “released” along with fast bowling coach Umar Gul. They were replaced by Pakistan’s white-ball coaches Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke.The seven players brought into the squad included five with no Test experience and another two who had played a combined 10 Tests. By the time Pakistan reached Birmingham, they were not only playing a different group of players from the one that had begun the tour, they were also in many ways no longer playing a Test team at all.The upheaval continued when Mohammad Rizwan and Imam-ul-Haq, two of the players removed from the squad, were investigated by Pakistan’s National Cyber Crimes Investigation Agency (NCCIA) over allegations of leaking team information.None of this is unfamiliar territory for Pakistan cricket. The Test side has had three captains and six head coaches in the last three years, while the PCB has gone through five chairmen in five years.Punishing players has often gone hand in hand with those changes.The PCB banned then-captain Mohammad Yousuf and senior batter Younis Khan for an indefinite period and disciplined five other players, including Afridi, after a disastrous 3-0 whitewash in Australia in 2010.The defeat at Edgbaston was Pakistan’s 16th in their last 21 Tests and left them ninth and last in the current World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, the same position in which they finished the previous cycle.
Pakistan’s Babar Azam, center, with teammates following his side’s defeat to England on day four of the third cricket Test at Edgbaston, in Birmingham, England, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026.
An average England team did not need to be great
Pakistan’s performance in the series was not even average. If there was a team that played average cricket, it was England. Pakistan were below average.England did not need to have a great series to win it. No batter from either side scored a century in the series, while one of England’s four fast bowlers, Gus Atkinson, took only four wickets in the entire series, three of them in the final innings.England’s numbers 8 to 11 averaged more than Pakistan’s top seven. Before Pakistan’s second innings in the final Test, the only time they crossed 200 in the series, Tongue had already hit as many boundaries (11) as any Pakistani batter other than Saud Shakeel.Pakistan’s first innings score in the three Tests tells much of the story: 171 at Leeds, 110 at Lord’s and 133 at Birmingham. They were repeatedly so far behind after their first innings that the second half of the match became an exercise in trying to recover from damage that had already been done.England’s opening pair averaged less than 15 runs together across the series, which should have given Pakistan an advantage. However, Pakistan’s openers managed only 3.33 in the series. Moreover, their first two wickets averaged just 4.66 runs. Across six innings, they scored only 56 runs for their first two wickets, the worst average for the first two wickets by any team in a Test series where they batted in at least five innings.At Lord’s, Imam-ul-Haq injured his calf on the first day and did not even bat in either innings. So England’s biggest weakness in the series didn’t really become a weakness.Pakistan used 23 players on the tour, with 16 of them eventually playing. On the other hand, England used 11 players across the three Tests.Pakistan also bowled 38 no-balls compared with England’s eight, another telling difference in a series where the margin between the two sides was often created by their ability to get ordinary things right.This was the sixth time in 12 series that Pakistan had been whitewashed in a Test series of two or more matches in the last four years.Saud Shakeel showed some resistance when everyone around him seemed keen to return to the dressing room, finishing the series as the second-highest scorer from either side. Mohammad Abbas was also somewhat consistent with the ball, taking 13 wickets at an average of 25.38. There were moments of brilliance from Razaullah in the third Test, who came in as a replacement for one of the seven players axed after Lord’s. But that was all: moments. Pakistan look in no position to get better from here, while the PCB, going by its pattern, looks set to continue operating on its annual panic cycle.
