England's miseries(-worma)

As if the defeat, and the wait for Vaughan's return wasn't enough, now Trescothick may have to travel back home due to personal reasons.

If Trescothick does need to fly home it will leave England with a batting headache, if captain Michael Vaughan does not recover from a knee injury to lead his team in the second Test in Faisalabad

That Tresco was the only Eng batsman convincingly amongst runs is ofcourse the main worry. Besides the small matter of burdening the already over-loaded Freddie with captaincy. This tour can really turn into a disaster for Eng. Ofcourse on the flip side Vaughan can recover, Tresco may not have to fly home, and they can come back strongly.

In more bad news Hoggard was fined for excessive appealing...err...not appealing...whatever the heck ICC thinks he was doing or avoiding.

Then the post-mortem reports: Jonathan Agnew on BBC although nothing we haven't already discussed. Eng's inability to read Kaneria is his focus.

Part of the reason for this is that none of the batsmen appeared to have a clue what Danish Kaneria was doing with the ball.

Although he even wonders if this was the best chance for Eng to register a win in this series.

They might very well have their captain back for the second match, but they might not get a better chance to win a game in this series than in Multan.

Derek Pringle also zeroes in on the lack of application, and over-ambitious nature of Eng batting.

They cannot claim they were not forewarned of their batting frailties. In both warm-up games the burning question had been who would get significant runs if Marcus Trescothick failed, as he did in the second innings here? The answer was nobody.

The criticism of KP is muted yet, but I can already see the buildup

KP, a monicker that doesn't yet have the same ring as WG, was never going to get the runs in singles, as he revealed when hoisting Kaneria for a six over midwicket. He is the kind of bloke who puts his chips on green in Roulette, and wins, but his team might have benefited from a more measured approach

Kind of..like Sehwag in test matches, no? Or, more correctly, hoping to be a Sehwag like case, I would say.

Then comes dear Geoffrey Boycott who, as usual, holds no punches.

If they play like that in Australia next winter they will get walloped. If that is how they play under pressure then they will never retain the Ashes. They have to learn to adapt.

He also points out their all too noticeable technical drawbacks against spin

They sweep or lap the ball or wait for a short one to punish because they can't pick Danish Kaneria's bowling. They are not confident of driving or coming out of their crease because they are not sure which way the ball is going to turn.

Although he doesn't go all the way closing the door of the series on them

I still think England's bowlers can take 20 wickets and that gives them a chance, but Pakistan will now be very tempted to prepare flat batting pitches and get draws out of the remaining two Tests. England have come back before, but they will have to bat a hell of a lot better next time

Also Jim White and Martin Johnson in Telegraph..pretty much echoing the same sentiments. Johnson's, though, the most entertaining of them all. On Pak's fear of losing

There are three types of veils in Multan, one worn by the women for religious reasons, one by the men to keep out the dust and one by their cricketers to disguise themselves in the event of losing.

And on Pak team's focus on final day

The first clue we had as to how focused Pakistan were was when Inzamam ul Haq made a diving stop in the gully. This may be routine stuff for your average cricketer, but when they get around to erecting a monument to Inzy in his home town, they won't know which is the statue and which is actually him. It is the first recorded instance of Izamam getting dirt on his sweater, or indeed effecting a piece of fielding that registered more frames per second - albeit marginally - than the slow motion replay.

Meanwhile, in the WI-Aus second test...its the same old story. Somehow...this series, in more ways than one, reminds me of our 0-3 drubbing in the 98-99 season down under.