Vithushan Ehantharajah is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo

Since the gamble in Multan paid off last week, though, preparations for a repeat have gone into overdrive. The curators were in Pindi before the second Test ended, with Aleem Dar and Aqib Javed, part of the selection committee, making the trip on the day the game ended.

Over the weekend, industrial sized fans and wedding-style heaters were brought in, with windbreakers surrounding the surface. The heaters were gone by Monday, though the giant fans were working. Some footmarks are visible on the strip, notably outside the left-hander’s off-stump at the media end. Each side have a left-arm spinner, a finger spinner and a legspinner in their bowling ranks.

“It’s an interesting pitch,” Jason Gillespie, Pakistan’s head coach, said. “Since I’ve been here, there’ve been fans on which we’ve all seen. So obviously it’s very dry and not a lot of grass on it. We probably expect it to favour the slower balls here.”

The series is level at 1-1. Pakistan are looking for their first series win since a 2-0 victory in Sri Lanka in July, and a first at home since they beat South Africa in February 2021 by a similar scoreline.

Pakistan: 1 Saim Ayub, 2 Abdullah Shafique, 3 Shan Masood (capt), 4 Kamran Ghulam, 5 Saud Shakeel, 6 Mohammad Rizwan (wk), 7 Salman Agha, 8 Aamer Jamal, 9 Sajid Khan, 10 Noman Ali, 11 Zahid Mahmood

In a major overhaul, the days of parsimony when it came to the number of teams have flown out of the window. This year’s QeA will see 18 teams spread out into 16 regions take part; Lahore and Karachi have two teams each. Last year, just eight teams played the tournament, with the four years prior seeing just six participants. Karachi Whites are the defending champions.

“Quaid-e-Azam Trophy is the pinnacle of domestic cricket in Pakistan as it is not just a tournament but also an event that showcases the immense talent across the country and prepares them for the challenges of international cricket,” Abdullah Niazi, the director of domestic operations, said in a statement. “As always, we will continue to provide the best possible platform for players to excel and show their capabilities on the biggest stage in domestic cricket as they will be rubbing their shoulders with the best players of the country.

“Earlier we demonstrated a successful Champions One-Day Cup, and are fully committed to strengthening our domestic structure. The successful execution of Quaid-e-Azam Trophy remains at the heart of this commitment.”

Just days ago, though, the fate of this year’s Quaid-e-Azam Trophy was uncertain. ESPNcricinfo understands the tournament was delayed, with the domestic cricket department awaiting the chairman’s sign-off for the tournament. The QeA was tentatively scheduled to start on October 20.

The start date of October 26 is considerably later than usual. Just two of the last 15 years have seen the tournament begin after this date. The PCB opted to host the Champions One-Day Cup in September, Pakistan’s only meaningfully empty window until May, pushing the first-class competition deeper into the season.

“If you want to prepare for SENA [series in South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia], you can do it during practice and first class cricket,” Shakeel said. “If there’s first-class cricket before South Africa, we could prepare those kinds of pitches there. But we should prepare pitches and conditions series-by-series, and according to the opposition.”

“If you look at the difference between Multan and Pindi, there’s a difference of climate,” Shakeel said. “Multan is warmer than Pindi, Multan is warmer and more humid compared to Pindi. Pindi favours fast bowlers slightly and has more bounce, compared to Multan. The groundsman prepares according to that, and I think that’s what causes the changes in the pitch.

“But the way the pitch looks and the success we got in the second Test, we’ll try for a similar kind of pitch that favours us and helps us win this game.”

Since returning from the UAE, Pakistan have agonised over how best to use home advantage. In the first couple of years, the wisdom was to shift sharply from their tactics in the UAE, reverting to seam-friendly pitches they believed would be easier to prepare. It coincided with a young crop of fast bowlers, primarily Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah, coming up. Early encouragement, such as a Naseem five-for against Sri Lanka and a hat-trick against Bangladesh, followed up by a two-Test series win over South Africa where Afridi took five wickets on a decisive final day in Pindi, appeared to vindicate that tactic.

It appears, for now, to have led to a sharp volte-face in the PCB’s thinking. “We should look at pitches for series to series and match to match. And we’ve come to realise this quite late,” Shakeel said. “If you want to prepare for SENA [series in South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia], you can do it during practice and first-class cricket. If there’s first-class cricket before South Africa, we could prepare those kinds of pitches there. But we should prepare pitches and conditions series-by-series, and according to the opposition.

“Our comeback in the second game gave us a really good morale boost. A win is always very helpful in creating a positive atmosphere. We’ll try to give spinners an advantage once more because they struggled with that in the second Test.”

Pakistan opted not to name their XI on Tuesday, as England have done, preferring a longer look at the surface. Legspinner Zahid Mahmood was ineffective despite helpful conditions in Multan, bowling only six overs all match, potentially raising the chances slightly of playing a specialist seamer.

Ultimately, with England having named three spinners, that appears unlikely. “I can’t say at the moment, because we haven’t discussed this,” Shakeel said. “If there’s a spinning pitch, we may go with three spinners again.”

Pakistan have stepped up attempts to prepare a spinning pitch for their Test series decider against England, using industrial-sized fans, outdoor heaters and windbreakers in a bid to dry out the surface at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium.

Rawalpindi is typically among the flattest pitches in Test cricket, with minimal assistance for spinners. Mehidy Hasan Miraz, the Bangladesh offspinner, took 10 wickets in their 2-0 series win in Rawalpindi last month, but since the venue returned to hosting Tests in 2019, spinners have averaged nearly 50 runs per wicket there.

Seam bowlers have fared better, taking a wicket every 34 runs, with the average assisted by a Test against South Africa in January 2021. On a surface that offered assistance to the seamers right through the game, Shaheen Afridi and Hasan Ali took nine of South Africa’s ten wickets in the fourth innings, eight of them on the final day. All four innings registered scores between 200 and 300, and the PCB has previously considered that the gold standard for a Pindi Test wicket.

On Sunday, groundstaff had set up three large heaters and an industrial-sized fan at each end of the pitch, drying it out with hot air, with a windbreak at each end to keep the heat in. Pakistan’s players and staff inspected the surface when they trained on Monday morning, at which stage only the fans remained. It continued to dry out in the afternoon heat.

Notably, the Test strip is one of only three that has been cut across the square; the other two are practice strips, one on each side of the pitch. England’s seamers used a dry, abrasive square to get the ball reverse-swinging in the second Test in Multan, but a grassy square and a lush outfield may make that more challenging this week.

England did not train on Monday and are open-minded ahead of their session on Tuesday. “I don’t know what to expect. I haven’t seen anything,” Jack Leach, who is the leading wicket-taker in the series, told the BBC. “We’ll go to training and have a look at it. I feel quite clear about what I’m doing and that doesn’t really change depending on the wicket. We’ll see what it is.”

There is no clarity on when the 2024-25 season of the Quaid-e-Azam (QeA) Trophy will start despite Pakistan’s bumper international Test season being well underway. A schedule tentatively put out by the PCB in August had Pakistan’s premier first-class tournament beginning on October 20, but the day before that date, the fate of the tournament remains uncertain.

While the dates for all domestic competitions announced by the PCB in August were tentative and subject to change, a PCB official told ESPNcricinfo as recently as last month that the QeA was set to keep to its October 20 plan. ESPNcricinfo understands that no one, even those in charge of domestic affairs at the PCB, knows when the tournament schedule will eventually be announced.

ESPNcricinfo has learned that the tournament is waiting to be greenlit by PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi.

The PCB declined to comment on what holds the approval back at this stage, though budgetary approval operationally comes from the chairman, and is understood to be one of the factors in the delay. Even so, the lack of information about the QeA is in stark contrast to the fanfare with which the Champions One-Day Cup, which was held in September, was marked by the board.

The QeA has never quite managed to keep to a schedule or format, but no information about its start this late into a season is unprecedented of late. In each but two of the last 15 years has the tournament started later than October 26, with the schedule usually out well before October. Each of the last two seasons saw it begin in September; the tournament last year began on September 10, and was wrapped up by October 26.

The situation is even more jarring in a season where Pakistan are scheduled to play more Test matches than any other this century. They are already more than halfway into the seven home Test matches they play between August 2024 and January 2025, with two Test matches in South Africa at the turn of the year.

Smith and his partner are expecting their first child in mid-December, with the birth likely to clash with either England’s second or third Test in New Zealand. “Being at the birth of my son is not something I want to miss,” he told the Daily Mail recently. “It will be a memory that I cherish more than any in cricket anyway, so if I lost my place because of it, so be it.”

“It’s life, right?” McCullum said of Smith’s absence. “People have kids and we wish them all the best, to be there and support their partners. At this stage, it looks like Jamie will probably play the first [Test in New Zealand] and may miss the next two. We’re not totally sure – it’s up to Mother Nature a little – but we know we’ve got Jordan Cox in the squad here.”

It will not concern England that Cox has hardly kept in the last year, as shown with Smith’s own selection earlier this summer despite being second-choice behind Ben Foakes at Surrey. McCullum believes from his own experience that New Zealand is “a comfortable place” to keep wicket, and wants to see how Cox – whose glovework he describes as “solid” – fares at Test level.

Cox should make his ODI debut in that series and will have a chance to stake a late claim for a spot in England’s squad for next year’s Champions Trophy. But it is the prospect of a Test debut later this year that could satisfy his restlessness, and provide vindication for the air miles he will rack up in the first half of the English winter.

“He’s annoyingly good at everything he does – particularly on the golf course,” McCullum said. “He’s one of those guys that you look at and say he’s got a high ceiling in terms of talent, particularly with bat in hand. There’s a fair chance that he’ll get the opportunity in New Zealand, if Jamie does return home, to bat down the order and take the gloves.”