RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) – England captain Ben Stokes had no complaints about losing the Test series against Pakistan 2-1 on two engineered spin wickets.

“Absolutely not,” Stokes said after Pakistan beat England by nine wickets within three days of the third and final Test at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium to clinch their first series win at home since 2021.

“When you’re playing in your home conditions, you want to give yourself the best chance to get into the game more. And that’s what Pakistan felt like,” he said. “They needed to do (that) to give themselves a chance to win, so absolutely no complaints whatsoever.”

Pakistan’s trick of making dry wickets using industrial fans and outdoor heaters nullified England’s brilliant start to the series as they posted 823-7 that declared them a first Test win by an innings and 47 runs.

The selection committee recalled spinners Noman Ali and Sajid Khan after 10 months and the slow bowlers claimed 39 of the 40 wickets in the last two Tests.

“They use their home conditions to their advantage,” Stokes said. “Pakistan just played better cricket for a longer period of time than we did.”

Ali and Khan claimed all 20 wickets in the second Test on a recovered wicket before sharing 19 wickets in the final Test, which lasted just seven sessions.

England could not take their opportunities in both Test matches. They dropped two crucial catches by Salman Ali Agha in the second Test and then in Rawalpindi allowed Pakistan to take a 77-run first innings lead after pushing them to 187-7.

The top-order batsmen were also strangled against Ali and Khan as Harry Brook scored a triple hundred and Joe Root made a career-best 262 in the first Test. Ollie Pope, who led in the first Test with Stokes still nursing his hamstring injury, ended the series disappointingly on just 55 runs in six innings.

Stokes scored 1, 37, 12 and 3 on his return in the last two Tests and his sub-par streak was summed up when he got out lbw in horrendous fashion trying to leave Ali’s armball on Saturday.

“We’ve obviously underperformed because we’ve lost the last two games,” Stokes said. “We had our own challenges and we couldn’t stand up to those challenges long enough to get the result we wanted.

“We did that a very small number of times in the last two games,” he added. “But when you don’t do that for long periods of time, you’re more than likely going to end up on the wrong side of results, which has definitely happened in these two games.”

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