WHAT England hope for in the three-day game starting on Pakistan’s most delightful ground tomorrow is a pitch that will make their bowlers work hard, especially the newly arrived Stephen Harmison and Andrew Flintoff. By the same token, they want a surface that will give their batsmen the opportunity to spend a long time in the middle.

For two reasons, neither wish may come to pass. The first is the heavy morning and evening dew in Lahore at this time of the year; the second a pitch that looks perfectly prepared and is normally full of runs but that may prove to have a little too much grass left on it when high-class fast bowlers get going.

England possess the necessary firepower, although whether they field three specialist fast bowlers in support of Flintoff, or only two plus Ashley Giles and Shaun Udal, will indicate the strategy for next week’s first Test. It will be a straight choice between Udal and James Anderson when the side is chosen after a practice today, and barring injuries the alternative will be the same, no doubt, at Multan a week today, depending on the look of the pitch there.

Everything that happened in Rawalpindi — not least the fact that others were placed in the bat-pad position that Ian Bell occupied against Australia — suggested that the decision has already been taken to replace Bell with Paul Collingwood. This, in turn, given Collingwood’s usefulness as a medium-pacer, makes the selection of Udal more logical.

In among the wide variety of trees at the Bagh-e-Jinnah (Jinnah Gardens), there should be some swing early and late in the day and the dew was heavy enough at the 10am starting time yesterday to suggest that the new ball would move about off what, at that stage at least, was a greenish surface. Two groundsmen were rolling an essentially solid pitch, however, while the remainder of Lahore’s citizens rested, celebrating the post-Ramadan festival of Eid ul-Fitr in subdued fashion out of sympathy for the stricken survivors of the earthquake in the northern mountains.

There is time for the preparation of conditions that would provide a more even contest than the one in the corresponding game here five years ago, when unexpected rain resulted in a damp pitch and a facile win for England.

With seven Test players in the squad of 14, Pakistan A will be as keen to give England a thorough preparation for battles against more experienced cricketers. They are led by Hasan Raza, who was supposedly aged 14 when he played his first Test, against Zimbabwe in Faisalabad in 1996. Reacting to widespread doubt about claims such as this, and the once familiar sight of bearded 11-year-olds, the Pakistan Cricket Board now insists on biological tests to determine the age of players hoping to represent them at under-19 level.

Imran Farhat, Taufiq Umar, Arshad Khan, Mohammad Asif, Shahid Nazir and Mohammad Khalil are the other members of the team with Test experience. Most are unknown to the England players, although Arshad, the tall off spinner who took three for 60 in the Faisalabad Test against them last time, will command respect. If Bob Woolmer’s assessment of Asif, the 22-year-old fast-medium bowler, is correct, so will he. He has played only a single Test, in Sydney in January in a match dominated by leg spinners.

Only Marcus Trescothick managed to get settled in Rawalpindi, so significant runs for at least some of the main England batsmen and a decent workout for Flintoff and Harmison are the prime England objectives in this match.

Harmison, wonderfully matured by comparison with the gauche and homesick youngster who left the under-19 tour early on his last visit to Pakistan, is happy to play whatever role his captain asks of him.

“We’ll adapt to whatever we play on,” the fast bowler said before heading for the gym yesterday. “If the wickets are flat and don’t offer much bounce I’ll have to fall in line, do a containing job and make sure I keep the pressure on for whoever’s bowling at the other end.”