'No excuses', says Brendon McCullum as England succumb to Pakistan's spin cycle

Despite flaws following an innings get in the first Test, head coach supports the top six.

Brendon McCullum, England's head coach, says his team have" no mistakes" after crashing to a 2-1 set battle with back-to-back losses in Multan and Rawalpindi, but admits he was surprised it took Pakistan until the second Test to make the kind of spinning pitches that have been his group's undoing on recent tours of the continent.

Pakistan had been left with no place to hide after England's brutal win on a flat board in the first Evaluation in Multan, where they powered past a apparently remarkable first-innings 556 to publish 823 for 7 declared, the fourth-highest Test total in history, with Harry Brook setting up their innings win with a career-best 317.

But, after changing their selection panel and tailoring the subsequent surfaces with the use of heaters and industrial fans, Pakistan transformed their fortunes, with spinners Sajid Khan and Noman Ali sharing 39 of England's next 40 wickets, as their opponents mustered just 814 runs across their final four innings of the series.

Not only is the result a stark turnaround from England's 3-0 win in Pakistan two years ago, it comes in the wake of their 4-1 loss in India in February, meaning that England have now gone from winning four in a row under Stokes and McCullum in Asia, to losing six of their last seven, and by comprehensive margins.

" That's life", McCullum told Sky Sports after England's nine-wicket defeat. " We obviously coughed up the opportunity to win the series. We did some good stuff throughout, and we leave ultimately disappointed, but also very much complimentary of how Pakistan played. But we know within ourselves that we've had an opportunity to have been better than that and we're a little bit disappointed about that.

" Credit to Pakistan, the way that those two spinners bowled was superb," McCullum said, after Noman and Sajid had combined to rout England for 112 in their second innings in Rawalpindi.

" I thought they varied the pace beautifully. Noman from the other end, putting pace on with the occasional slow one, and Sajid adjusting to the slower one. I thought was great partnership bowling. And our guys were n't able to sustain the pressure, unfortunately."

When asked if he was comfortable with Pakistan's extreme measures to introduce spinners into the series, including the seemingly unheard of reuse of the first-test pitch in Multan and the raking of the Rawalpindi surface to exacerbate the turn-on-off, McCullum said he applauded the initiative they had shown.

" I kind of like it to be honest, "he said". They had the courage to make decisions about their employees and the surfaces they desired to play on.

" When teams come to England, ideally we play on the surfaces that we're more accustomed to, which allow our strengths to really flourish and maybe paper over some of the weaknesses as well, which every team naturally has.

I'm a little surprised that Pakistan has taken Pakistan's time. Because when you go to Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, the ball is always going to turn. What we had here a couple of years ago, or in that first Test match, where it was pretty flat, was a different challenge. There will be no excuses from our perspective, so it'll be interesting to see how they continue to offer these kinds of services over the coming years. We had our chances, and we ran second."

McCullum acknowledged that the series defeat would raise more questions for his team, despite remaining amiable. In the more extreme conditions, Olivia Pope and Zak Crawley were notably lacked direction, while Brook, who had racked up four centuries and a fifty in his previous six innings, was able to top score of 26 in his final four innings on the tour.

" It's pretty much the same batting group that came here two years ago, and were outstanding in these conditions, and it's the same batting group that put on 800 in the first Test match," McCullum said". As the conditions changed, we were presented with different challenges and we were n't quite able to adapt to those challenges. And that's a missed opportunity."

" I have no doubt, and the skipper has no doubt, that our batting group that we've now had together for the best part of 18 months is the best that we've got, "he added". We're very confident, we've just got to make sure we keep allowing guys to develop them and keep becoming the players that they want to become, and will benefit from that."

The focus will also be placed on Shoaib Bashir and Jack Leach, who were England's spinners ' direct competitors when they fought the odds with significantly better results in their final two Tests. Bashir, whose selection for the India tour had been on the basis of his natural attributes, rather than any proven record in first-class cricket, has now bowled more overs in 2024 than any other player, but his series haul of nine wickets at 49.66 pales compared to Sajid's 19 at 21.10.

" ]Sajid and Noman ] were brilliant in the way they bowled together, and they challenged in different methods with the paces that they used," McCullum said". Could we have been better? Yeah, of course, right? Anytime you lose a Test or lose a series, you've got to have that period of reflection. And we'll do that, and say, right, next time we're presented with conditions similar to that, how will we respond? What must we accomplish? Do we need to vary our pace more? Do we need to change more about our strategies? That's natural, right? When a batsman leaves, it makes no difference.

" You're always trying to improve, but you've got to be really careful that you're not seeking perfection, because it does n't exist in an inconsistent game. The game we play is going to come with periods where it's not going how you want it to, but you've still got to hold firm.

" We will be confronted with spinning conditions at some stage in the future, and we hope that some of the lessons, good and bad that we've had throughout this series, will give us a bit more of, a bit more of a base to be able to be successful".