England v Pakistan: first Test, day three – live!

19th over: England 37-2 (Root 22, Malan 0) Root takes a single off the fourth ball, giving Shadab a couple of deliveries at the left-handed Malan, which he’s very excited about. A crowd of close fielders is brought in, but Malan comfortably survives. One more over before lunch.

18th over: England 36-2 (Root 21, Malan 0) Hasan bowls a bit wide, and Root drive it for an imperious four. “If Stoneman plays fully forward to that ball, he hits it with his bat, or it hits his pad outside the line of the stumps,” notes Gary Naylor. “It looked unplayable, turning and keeping low, but it wasn’t.” This is absolutely the case. Shadab has got the ball spinning pretty hard, but the batsman need not to make his life easy.

17th over: England 31-2 (Root 16, Malan 0) Some spin, then, from Shadab, and he almost immediately gets one to turn viciously of the rough and jag into Stoneman’s pad. The batsman pushes at the next one, nicks it, and it goes between the keeper and first slip and away for four. So he retreats cautiously, and instead of pushing forward to deal with the ball he lingers on the back foot and is then helpless when it turns and heads for the stumps. That’s well bowled, but technically poor from Stoneman.

16th over: England 26-1 (Stoneman 5, Root 15) Stoneman could be under just too much pressure to perform. With an average of 29, five 50s, no score above 60 and all sorts of question marks dangling over his head like angels’ halos, he desperately needs a decent knock. This may become that, but so far it has been very slow going. It’s another maiden, and Stoneman has taken 41 deliveries over his five runs.

15th over: England 26-1 (Stoneman 5, Root 15) Another maiden, from Faheem to Root. Abbas is currently the most expensive of the bowlers in this innings, with his five overs going for 1.6 runs each.

14th over: England 26-1 (Stoneman 5, Root 15) Hasan Ali, whose four wickets in the first innings included that of Root, is denied a first of this innings, though it did always look like it had pitched too wide. Then Stoneman pushes through the covers, and it takes a fine bit of fielding to limit the damage to two runs.

13th over: England 24-1 (Stoneman 3, Root 15) And Root sends his very next delivery to the rope! It’s a bit wide, and cut very nicely indeed. Indeed, it’s such a fine shot Root takes the remainder of the over off.

12th over: England 20-1 (Stoneman 3, Root 11) Hasan Ali comes on. Root has faced 33 balls in this innings, and 24 in the first, and has yet to score a boundary. The last time he batted twice in a Test and failed to score a boundary was in Sharjah in 2015, and before that it had only happened against New Zealand at Headingley the same year. He has already scored as many runs in this innings as in those four combined.

11th over: England 19-1 (Stoneman 3, Root 10) A change of bowling, and Faheem Ashraf comes on. His first over is a maiden, to Stoneman.

10th over: England 19-1 (Stoneman 3, Root 10) A strangled appeal from the bowler as the ball thunders into Root’s pad, but it was moving - quite a lot - across the batsman and heading wide of leg stump. Meanwhile, what is going on with the photo of Mohammad Abbas on his Cricinfo profile page? All his team-mates have delightful studio portraits, but his appears to have been stolen from 1976.

9th over: England 17-1 (Stoneman 2, Root 9) The pressure remains on. England are in survival mode, playing within themselves, reining in the aggression and the ambition. One run off the over.

8th over: England 16-1 (Stoneman 2, Root 8) Abbas bowls across the left-handed Stoneman, the ball moving a little off the slope, forcing a shot and a miss.

7th over: England 13-1 (Stoneman 2, Root 5) Amir and Abbas are both producing some excellent, disciplined, hostile bowling, with very little loose stuff for the batsmen to tuck into, and some good fielding in the deep when the batsmen threaten the boundary. It is all, in short, good stuff. The batsmen are therefore reliant on sharp running to keep the scoreboard ticking over, and they have already offered a couple of vague sniffs of a potential run-out. Then with his fifth delivery Amir finds the edge, but it lands short of second slip!

6th over: England 10-1 (Stoneman 0, Root 5) Root is hogging the strike here: for the second successive over he faces all six deliveries and gets a single off the last.

5th over: England 7-1 (Stoneman 0, Root 2) Amir spends most of the over bowling nicely across Root from round the wicket, but he gets his line wrong a couple of times: one is straight and wide of leg stump, and it flicks Root’s pad and goes down the ground for four leg byes, and the last is into the body and worked away for a single.

4th over: England 2-1 (Stoneman 0, Root 1) Both of these batsmen were out for four in the first innings. If there’s a silver lining to the cloud that is Cook’s premature departure, it’s that after scoring an attention-hogging 70 with his first knock he has at least shared round the ignominy (though his catching had already gone quite a long way towards doing that).

3rd over: England 1-1 (Stoneman 0, Root 0) A maiden from Amir. “Geoffrey Boycott has just said: ‘If I was in the dressing room mine would be a very short, sharp, speech, because I think people remember them better than talking forever for a long time,’” writes Ben Attenborough. “Inevitably Geoffrey then went on to talk for a very, very, long time about what he would say to the players.”

2nd over: England 1-1 (Stoneman 0, Root 0) Mohammad Abbas takes the ball at the other end. Might the manner of his dismissal add a little motivation for him? “Remind me - when did it become acceptable to bounce out a number 11?” wonders Ranil Dissanayake. “Didn’t England go all up in arms about this when they were getting it from Mitchell Johnson?” It was perhaps a little legtheorish. Anyway, he aims at the stumps, and is rapidly rewarded.

1st over: England 1-0 (Cook 1, Stoneman 0) Mohammad Amir opens the bowling. With the sun shining and the pitch drier than it was in the first couple of days, these appear close to ideal batting conditions. But can England ignore the scoreboard and make hay?

So, it begins. This is a big session for England: they have not been the better team for any of the match’s first six, a trend they need to reverse sharpish.

114th over: Pakistan 363-8 (Amir 24, Abbas 5) Abbas again uses gets off strike with a leg bye, and then blammo! Amir thumps the ball back down the ground for four!

I’ve had several emails asking for the link to the BBC’s audio (only available to those outside the UK). Here it is:

113th over: Pakistan 356-8 (Amir 19, Abbas 4) At the other end, Amir seems keen most of all on sticking around. As a result, Wood bowls a maiden.

112th over: Pakistan 356-8 (Amir 19, Abbas 4) Broad bowls one short, and Abbas clubs it away to the long-on boundary to equal his all-time top score in quite literally a stroke. It was also a no-ball. A couple of deliveries later he has a totally wild swing and gets only a little bat on the ball, enough to keep it away from both stumps and defenders. Still, Abbas’s batting philosophy is clear: go big or go home.

111th over: Pakistan 351-8 (Amir 19, Abbas 0) Mohammed Abbas (top score in nine Test innings: 4*), is on strike, and he survives five deliveries before one flicks off a pad and they run a leg bye. St John’s Wood is bathed in sunshine, with flags flapping in a pretty strong wind.

Out come the batsmen! Now, how much trouble can this final pair cause this morning? It looks like Mark Wood will be the first to test them.

It’s worth pointing out, though I don’t doubt that the England squad have worked extremely hard since they got together on Monday, and a pre-game kickabout has become a traditional part of their preparations. Still, this close to the action it could be a distraction.

Jimmy Anderson has a pre-cricket chat:

We’re obvously behind in the game. It’s down to us to get this last wicket and then put on a good show with the bat. If we can match what Pakistan get in this innings, it gives us something to bowl at.

Potentially in hindsight yes but I also think we didn’t do ourselves justice with the bat. Again with the ball, I think we bowled pretty well yesterday and on another day I think we could have bowled them out much cheaper.

He’s then asked about England bowling the wrong length, and his statistically better performance from the Nursery End:

Yesterday I didn’t think the ball did as much as the first day. We want to bowl that fuller length and find that edge, it depends on the batsman you bowl at.

We talk a lot about length, but if you’re not making the batsman play it doesn’t matter what length you bowl. I like bowling this end when the ball’s swinging. My grouping is a lot better from this end in terms of line.

And then about Stokes taking the second new ball yesterday, and all those dropped catches:

I didn’t feel in particularly great rhythm from this end. It’s just the way it goes. As a captain, you want your in-form bowlers to take the new ball and I was probably down the pecking order a bit yesterday.

We met up on Monday, and we put so much work in on the catching, in the slips in particular. It’s frustrating, but they’re not doing it on purpose. We’ve got areas to improve and the catching is one of them. We’ve put in a lot of work trying to get that better.

Weather watch: it has rained overnight in north London but currently it’s brighter than it was at any stage yesterday, and no further rain is forecast until this evening. So, we’re all set.