LONDON, Aug. 29 -- Babar Azam walked out at Lord's on Saturday morning not as Pakistan's returning hero but as cricket's most elegant problem-solver confronting a problem someone else had already made unsolvable. The fractured hand that cost him the Headingley humiliation had healed. The 180-run first-innings deficit Robinson created on Day 2 had not.

England extended that lead past 330 before rain interrupted Day 3 proceedings, leaving Pakistan to face a near-impossible fourth-innings chase on a surface that has exposed their batting over three days of play.

The arithmetic was stark. Pakistan's first innings produced 110 all out in 37.2 overs. England's second innings, interrupted by multiple rain delays, reached approximately 153 for ...