15 vs 3.33: How a struggling England side swept Pakistan 3-0

England opener Emilio Gay reacts after hitting his knee with the bat during the third test against Pakistan at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Birmingham, Britain, September 9, 2026. Joe Root was on 23, with England at 36 for two and chasing 130 in the final Test at Edgbaston, when he was hit by wide cover on his leg stump. Mohammad Ali was already running off to celebrate before he turned to see the umpire’s arm reaching for the ball on the front foot. It was his 17th such offense in the series, but the first to cost him a wicket. England would be 36 for three; instead, they won the match by eight wickets to complete a 3–0 sweep of Pakistan.There was something clingy about how the streak ended. Pakistan lost a wicket on the first ball of the series and erred on the last ball as England completed the lime. In between, there were three Tests in which Pakistan rarely looked competitive, often looked unprepared and ultimately barely resembled (literally) the team that landed in England.

Pakistan’s Mohammad Ali dismisses England’s Joe Root before being dismissed for no ball during the third Test at the Edgbaston Cricket Ground

Less than 24 hours after Pakistan’s heavy defeat in the second at Lord’s sealed the series for England, the PCB announced that seven players had been dropped from the Test squad. Tucked quietly into the last sentence of the statement was the news that head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed, who had been in the post for just five matches, had also been “sacked” along with fast bowling coach Umar Gul. They were replaced by Pakistan white-ball coaches Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke.The seven players brought into the squad included five with no Test experience and two others who had played a combined 10 Tests. By the time Pakistan arrived in Birmingham, not only were they playing a different set of players to the one that started the tour, they were 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 team, were investigated by Pakistan’s National Cyber ​​Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) for allegedly leaking information about the team.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 often went hand in hand with these changes.The PCB banned then-captain Mohammad Yousuf and senior batsman Younis Khan indefinitely and punished five other players, including Afridi, after the 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 cycle of the World Test Championship (WTC), the same position in which they finished the previous cycle.

Pakistan’s Babar Azam, center, with teammates after 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 may not have been great

Pakistan’s performance in the series was not even average. If there was a team that played mediocre cricket, it was England. Pakistan was below average.England didn’t need to have a great series to win it. No batsman from either side scored a century in the series, while one of England’s four fast bowlers, Gus Atkinson, took just four wickets in the entire series, including three in the final innings.England’s numbers 8 to 11 averaged higher than Pakistan’s sevens. 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 batsman other than Saud Shakeel.Pakistan’s first innings scores in three Tests tell a lot of the story: 171 at Leeds, 110 at Lord’s and 133 at Birmingham. They were repeatedly so far behind after the first inning that the second half of the game became an exercise in trying to recover from the damage already done.England’s opening pair averaged less than 15 runs combined throughout the series, which should have given Pakistan the advantage. However, Pakistan’s openers only managed 3.33 in the series. Moreover, their first two wickets averaged just 4.66 runs. They scored just 56 runs for their first two wickets in six innings, the worst first two wicket average by any team in a Test series where they have batted at least five innings.At Lord’s, Imam-ul-Haq injured his calf on the first day and did not bat in a single innings. So England’s biggest weakness in the series didn’t really become a weakness.Pakistan fielded 23 players for the tour, 16 of whom ended up playing. On the other hand, England used 11 players in the three Tests.Pakistan also bowled 38 no-balls compared to England’s 8, another stark difference in a series where the difference between the two sides has often been made up by their ability to get routine things right.It 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 to want to return to the dressing room and finish the series as the second highest scorer on either side. Mohammad Abbas was also somewhat consistent with the ball, taking 13 wickets at an average of 25.38. In the third Test, there were moments of brilliance from Razaullah, who came on as a replacement for one of the seven players axed at Lord’s. But that was all: moments. Pakistan look in no position to improve from here, while the PCB, true to form, looks set to continue its year-long cycle of panic.