It's not a warm day in north London, although by the weekend the temperatures are expected to reach 26 degrees. There is a lady in the crowd with a grey hoodie beneath a windcheater. Amir tries his luck from round the wicket, with three slips and a gully in place, but he cannot find the breakthrough.

Phil Tufnell
Ex-England spinner on BBC Test Match Special

Pakistan have slipped straight back into their rhythm. They're causing lots of problems.

Cook is closing in on 1,900 Test runs at Lord's, second only to his old mentor Graham Gooch, who has 2,015. Abbas continues as Root watches on from a narrow window in the dressing room, still managing a smile despite that shot he played earlier.

Matty Hayward‏: Another Cook double hundred coming here. Of course he'd be better off getting 95, because we have to ignore his big, big innings when talking about his averages.

These two Pakistan opening bowlers took 14 wickets between them in that inaugural Test against Ireland and Amir continues to probe as the sun returns at HQ, but the left-armer somehow remains wicketless after eight overs

Phil Tufnell
Ex-England spinner on BBC Test Match Special

If you can get the ball to hold its line from the Pavilion End, it makes it very difficult to play at. Bairstow missed that by miles. That can only be a scrambled sort of brain, for me.

Mohammad Abbas has a rather unorthodox action and appears to bowl off the wrong foot but he is causing problems for the batsmen, squaring Bairstow up with a beauty that zips fractionally over the off pole. The England wicketkeeper responds with a stylish drive through the covers for his third boundary.

Andrew Samson
BBC Test Match Special statistician

Alastair Cook's 50 came up from 96 balls, with 10 fours, in 129 minutes.

Image source, Getty Images

Dan Norcross
BBC Test Match Special

This is Cook's 89th score of 50 or more in Test matches - 32 of those have been converted into hundreds.

50 for Cookpublished at 28 overs

28 overs

Eng 80-3

Cook is beaten outside the off-stump by the mercurial Amir but the England batsman responds in style with a calm drive backward of square to the boundary to record his 56th Test fifty.

Phil Tufnell
Ex-England spinner on BBC Test Match Special

Pakistan have put the ball in the business area more often than not, with just a bit of movement.

An anxious moment for Bairstow, it's a bold drive and it flies off a thick edge just wide of gully for four.

Now the players are back out in the centre, there is a bit of dark cloud brewing menacingly in the distance but it will be Mohammad Abbas to begin the afternoon session from the Pavilion End to Jonny Bairstow.

News today that Ireland's Ed Joyce has retired from all cricket after a 21-year career in which he played 17 of his 78 one-day internationals for England.

The amiable 39-year-old left-hander played in Ireland's inaugural Test against Pakistan and will take up a role with the Ireland national team as performance batting and leadership coach. His former county Sussex will play an Ireland XI in a T20 match at the magnificent Arundel Castle Ground on 24 June as part of his testimonial.

Image source, Reuters

Michael Vaughan
Ex-England captain on BBC Test Match Special

I think it was very obvious in the winter that the England attack was a bit samey. They'd love a left-arm over but that's not the case at the minute so Mark Wood is the one to offer something a bit different.

BBC Radio 5 live sports extra

Andrew Strauss, director of cricket, speaking on Tuesday: "That long-standing problem about winning Tests away from home – if we’re going to overcome that, we almost need to take a leaf out of the white-ball cricket book.

"We need to think very differently about how to play our cricket away from home. That means different tactics, approaching things differently from a selection point of view.

"What we do need to understand is that there are some players - bowlers in particular - who may not offer their counties much in May when it's nipping around, but they still need game time and to develop.

"We need to wrap our arms around those and get our lead coaches working with them and making sure they're improving all the time."

Image source, Getty Images

Phil Tufnell
Ex-England spinner on BBC Test Match Special

Pakistan are getting England playing false shots, holding a good line and length at pace. Both sides have strength in their bowling and I don't think the Pakistan batting line-up is strong on experience, so I'd have looked to have had a bowl first, you have to think what the opposition would least like to do.

The new edition of the BBC's excellent Stumped magazine programme is now available as a podcast. In this latest episode, Jim Maxwell, Charu Sharma and Alison Mitchell reflect on the stellar career of retiring South Africa batsman AB De Villiers.

Image source, Getty Images

Now then. Can't get enough cricket chat? Want more from a South Asian perspective? 'The Doosra' podcast might just be for you.

Join England World Cup winner Isa Guha, comedian and Pakistan fan Aatif Nawaz and Ankur Desai from the BBC Asian Network for the pilot episode.

The team preview the England-Pakistan series, talk jumpers and hand-warmers and welcome a very special guest in England's Jos Buttler, who lit up this year's Indian Premier League.

Click here to listen

The first good news to bring you is that the BBC has secured the radio rights to the 2019 Cricket World Cup – which means Test Match Special will provide ball-by-ball coverage of what promises to be the biggest global sporting event in the UK next year.

It is part of a wider five-year radio rights deal for all ICC events through to 2023 – including the women’s World T20 in West Indies this year, the women’s World Cup in 2021 and the men’s World Cup in India in 2023.