In fact, if there was any ice cream on the Lord's dining room dessert menu, it must have been supplied by Walls of Jericho. Shortly after lunch yesterday, England's second-wicket pair were still batting after a liaison of four hours 11 minutes, yet two hours and nine minutes later it was all over. So much for the new bulldog spirit. England's guard dogs wouldn't have frightened the paper boy.
It is, sadly, an unarguable fact that England remain tiddlers in the fishpond of Test cricket and yesterday they were landed by a trout tickler at one end and a bloke lobbing hand grenades out of the side of the boat at the other. Mushtaq Ahmed teased them out while Waqar Younis blew them out of the water.
For all his prodigious turn, the pitch ought to have been too slow for Mushtaq to run through England after Michael Atherton and Alec Stewart had survived the morning session. However, the pitch was nothing like as slow as England's wits and Mushtaq, bowling round the wicket outside the leg stump, managed to get three front-line batsmen out in 20 balls with deliveries that could have been intercepted with the pad without any fear of an lbw decision.
When Waqar is at full throttle, it scarcely matters whether a pitch is made of concrete or suet pudding.
In between times, Graeme Hick was yorked by Waqar for the second time in the match, though it is fairly safe to assume that the selectors will ensure this fate will not befall him again this series. It was a magnificent delivery from Waqar but such is Hick's form at present that Waqar might have given him the old Fred Trueman line as he trudged back to the pavilion. ``Aye, lad, it were a good ball alright but it were wasted on thee.''
When Waqar is at full throttle, it scarcely matters whether a pitch is made of concrete or suet pudding. If he doesn't like it, he merely dispenses with it and Dominic Cork was another victim of his swinging yorker. He rarely requires the assistance of fielders and if bowled is a preferable option to lbw it is because it at least guarantees the batsman a semidignified exit rather than a hobble back on crushed toes.
Waqar, like many overseas cricketers, was introduced to Test cricket almost before he had outgrown his first pair of flannels. Englishmen are not so much thrown in at the deep end as issued with a rubber ring and led gently into the paddling pool.
The ball from Waqar which cannoned into Hick's stumps was officially recorded at 83mph, though a delivery from Wasim Akram on Sunday that tore past Atherton's chin-strap was timed at a laughable 59mph, and if the speed machine that has been operating here for the last five days was issued to the traffic police the courts would be full of short-trousered defendants charged with speeding on a tricycle.
There was only one aspect of Pakistan's cricket yesterday which was less than appealing - the appealing. They must have larynxes made of asbestos. To think there are still those who want television replays extended to lbws and catches. This would mean an average Test lasting about twice as long (not to mention being twice as tedious) as the O. J. Simpson trial.