Pakistan v England: Alastair Cook keeps tourists narrowly on top despite late fall of wickets on day two in Abu Dhabi Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott subsequently learned how to crawl, then walk, and finally - if not to run - then jog along against Pakistan's spinners during a second wicket stand of 139. It was an admirably sound partnership as both Cook and Trott applied their different methods, and its excellence was heightened by the struggles of all their teammates. Cook's 94 was based on two scoring shots only against the spinners but, above all, on a tighter defence than he had previously used against them. He used his height and reach to get well forward when necessary - although that didn't save him from being leg-before to Saeed Ajmal's dreaded doosra shortly before the close. Cook's two scoring shots were his clip through midwicket and his square-cut on the rare occasions that Ajmal and his two fellow-spinners, Hafeez and Rehman, dropped short. He waited for the bad ball in a long drawn-out game of cat-and-mouse, and waited, and waited some more, until one finally arrived. Trott was commendable for taking the initiative. At lunch England had leaked to 48 for the loss of Andrew Strauss, caught at bat-pad off an offbreak that bounced. Only 30 runs had been made from the 19 overs of spin, once it had been introduced in the sixth over. And after lunch Trott did not sit back and let Cook do all the work. Trott forced the pace against Pakistan's two pace bowlers in the hour after lunch, when the artful Misbah may have missed a trick. Once Pakistan's captain returned to spin at both ends, the runs dried up and England's wickets began to fall. An absolute pearler did for Trott, pitching middle-and-leg and hitting the top of his offstump. A shake of the head and a rueful grimace acknowledged the merit of Rehman's ripper. After Cook had been done by Ajmal's doosra, Kevin Pietersen again fell to Pakistan's mystery-spinner: an inside-edge on to his pad carried to slip. Like Strauss, his first mistake in this unforgiving game was his last. There was even time for Eoin Morgan to be dismissed, edging to slip, after he had looked all at sea against the spinners. It was only a matter of luck that Bell did not go the same way, for he was almost as baffled as Morgan had been. But he survived, and has the job of raising the latterday equivalent of the Siege of Lucknow.