Not a single player in Pakistan's current squad in England has any lucid memories of the last time a Pakistan team arrived on these shores and walked away with a series win. Nearly half of them weren't even born when, almost exactly three decades ago, Pakistan romped to a nine-wicket win at the Oval in August 1996 and coast to a 2-0 victory. That a winless streak in England would soon ensue was unthinkable; it was their fifth successive series win over this opposition, and their third on the trot in England.
Azhar Ali, who led Pakistan on their last Test tour there six years ago, remembers how easily it could have been different. Appointed captain of the Pakistan Test side in 2019, he had said there "could be no greater honour" and spoke excitedly about how this was his chance to leave a legacy in what he called the sport's best format. Already beginning to gain respect within England's red-ball circles - he was three seasons into a stint with Somerset in which he'd thrown himself into county cricket culture - Pakistan's Test tour in 2020 had the potential to become the crowning glory of Azhar's captaincy.
"In Pakistan, we're on one or the other emotional extreme most of the time," Azhar tells Cricinfo. "If a situation is going well, we get carried away, and when things get tough, we get down far too easily. As captain, the legacy I wanted to leave was I wanted us to be a calmer team more often. We shouldn't think 'oh we've lost three wickets, no one can move from their position, no one can listen to music now'. That culture of frantic loss of control needed to change. In every situation, the dressing room's atmosphere needs to be stable, in good times and bad. It was something we were having success with but the work was ongoing."
It is a cruel twist of fate, perhaps, that the most memorable game of Azhar's reign came down to one mad session at the end of the fourth day at a sun-soaked Old Trafford. Azhar's Pakistan had the match in the palm of their hands as a mixture of the raw, young pace of Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah along with the wizened wiles of Yasir Shah reduced England to 117 for 5, requiring a further 160 for victory.
"We were so far ahead in that match," Azhar recalls. "Throughout the game, aside from one session with the bat and one session with the ball, we were playing great cricket."
It had hitherto been a clinical performance from Pakistan. Shan Masood's epic 156 and a half-century from Babar Azam against an attack comprising James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer and Chris Woakes propelled them to an above-par 326. Mohammad Abbas blew out the top order in overcast conditions on the second evening, and Yasir mopped up to give Pakistan a 107-run lead.
Players who were billed to become the future of Pakistan cricket were contributing, which particularly pleased their captain. "Our Test side was rebuilding, but I sensed it was in the ascendancy," Azhar says. "There were lots of young fast bowlers. Babar was establishing himself into the Test side gradually. It was a new side, but an exciting one."
There was a setback when Pakistan's second innings with the bat did not quite measure up to their heroics the first time around. England were ruthless with the ball and electric in the field, but a number of loose shots and some casual running cost Pakistan. It took just a session and a half to bowl them out for 169.
Pakistan were still well in control. England needed 277; the last time Pakistan had failed to defend a target this steep was in Hobart in 1999, and just four times all told. Even Old Trafford's history was partial to them; the venue had only seen a higher total chased once. But, no matter how safe the neighbourhood, there's no benefit to leaving a door unlocked, but a potentially disastrous downside.
"We made things difficult [for ourselves] with the bat in the third innings. We should have scored more than the 169 we did. What happens in a sub-300 chase in England is if a counterattack is successful, the runs come very quickly."
It seemed like it might not matter when England lost half their side cheaply. Pakistan's discipline had tied England down; when the fifth wicket fell, England were inching along at a run rate around 2.60. They were down to their last two proper batters in Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes. And to make matters worse for the hosts, neither was in great form. Buttler had endured a shocker of a Test behind the stumps and an ordinary last few months with the bat. Woakes' batting form was even more dismal, across his last ten Test innings, he had averaged 6.80, getting out of single-figures just twice.
And so, England did something that after the days of Bazball might sound unremarkable, but was extremely unusual for an England side at the time: they threw caution to the wind.
"In the discussions we had with the England players, they told us they had one last option: to counterattack. They understood the game had slipped away from us, and so they said, 'why not play like it like a one-day game?'"
While Buttler was, on paper, the more obvious match-winner, it appears to have been Woakes' intrepid shot-making that caught the Pakistan captain off guard. The shot that became his bread-and-butter through that unbeaten knock was the inside out cover drive; eight of his ten boundaries during his unbeaten 84 came attempting that shot.
"We thought we'd control Buttler and target the other end. But instead Woakes, who hadn't scored many runs in the last 8-10 matches, all of a sudden caught fire and began to score very quickly. That was a turning point. He flipped the game on its head. With the number of shots he was playing inside out and the way the pitch was, if one of the balls stayed low or stopped a little in the wicket, he would have been gone. But even top edges that popped up dropped into gaps. Fortune favours the brave sometimes."
The third ball of that stand, Buttler reverse-swept Yasir for four to set the tone. Each of the next seven overs produced a boundary, and by tea, the pair had brought up the 50-partnership at better than a-run-a-ball. The counterattack on a sub-300 total Azhar dreaded was manifesting in front of his eyes.
"Other than Abbas and Yasir, we didn't have much experience in the bowling attack. It was a talented bowling side, but Shaheen and Naseem had only played single-digit Tests and were quite young. "Shaheen had bowled for a while, and Naseem was very young so he couldn't bowl long spells. So I had to keep an eye on that, and using the resources we had wasn't easy."
Their partnership began in the innings' 45th over, and Azhar remembers it as a time conditions suddenly became much easier for batting. The overcast skies from the first half of the day was replaced by dewy late evening sunshine. "With the ball going soft, even the pitch's two-paced nature disappeared."
That aggression also meant, crucially, that Pakistan did not get much of a window of opportunity with the second new ball. By the time it came, England had muscled along to 264, just 13 away from victory. Buttler had fallen after a 139-run stand with Woakes, who stuck around to see England through. Even the winning runs came via a boundary that flew through the slips as Woakes attempted to pierce the cover region.
"Credit goes to England for counterattacking," Azhar says. "Whatever risks they took paid off. We set different fields and what not, but could not stop the flow of runs."
That defeat was made all the more bitter by what transpired. The next two Tests were heavily weather-affected and could not produce results. Pakistan had let a golden opportunity slip through their fingers, one that means the current crop must still carry 1996 as their last successful reference point. They might so easily have had four team-mates who played that Old Trafford Test tell them what it was like to win a series here.
For one of them - Babar - who leads Pakistan now, Azhar advises constant match awareness and vigilance. "One bit of advice I'd give Babar is that the game changes and moves very quickly in England," Azhar says. "At times, it feels like wickets have fallen quite quickly, or the opposition has scored a lot of runs in a short amount of time. Outfields are quicker and the game moves fast. You have to be on top of your game in every session. A captain needs to be aware of when you're dominant. Because if you get an opportunity, make sure you don't let it slip."
For Azhar, though, that slip would prove the end for his brief stint at the helm. He was replaced as Test captain by Babar following that series, and retired from international cricket two years later. It is the one Test as captain he wishes could have produced a different outcome.
That is because, for all of Azhar's ambitions, Pakistan still remains a cricketing nation that lurches violently from one emotional state to another. "In Pakistan, you lose a match, and the captain gets the blame straightaway. Even the captains that came after me, people didn't seem to like their captaincy much, and we just kept changing. Didn't seem to like my captaincy much either!"
It meant Azhar did not get the opportunity to leave his mark on the side in the format he felt dearest. "But again," he sighs wistfully, "leaving a legacy in Pakistan is not easy."