Pakistan have had a great season, winning three Test series on the bounce and their next challenge is to see just how much further this improvement can take them.

Nobody expects them to win in England, where Michael Vaughan’s team have been quite formidable in recent years, but if Shoaib Akhtar can regain his fitness and bowl as he did in the home series in November and December, Pakistan have a real chance of an upset.

I believe Shoaib is the key man, as he was in Pakistan with his great use of variety and slower balls, yorkers and in-swingers and of course his great pace. He will get even more assistance on English pitches too than he did on the lifeless pitches he was faced with at places like Faisalabad, where he adapted marvellously.

However, before I get too carried away with the England tour, this is a time we should savour and reflect on with pride and satisfaction. The England series was a great result, even if they were without some key players.

The India series was as much a satisfying result more than anything against the old rival as there was nothing uch between the teams throughout in a series that was played on poor and batsman-friendly pitches.

The win in Sri Lanka, though, was possibly the greatest achievement of all. It was almost a steal after surviving defeat in the first Test thanks to Shoaib Malik’s unbeaten 148. That innings may well be the making of him and showed that he has more ability than just the talent to hit the ball out of the park in one-day games.

Winning in Sri Lanka was largely down to the newcomer Mohammad Asif, whose 11 wickets will give Inzamam-ul-Haq and Bob Woolmer genuine excitement about his potential for English conditions. His line and length bowling should be perfect for England and he may just give their batsmen something to worry about.

Another positive to his success is the whole aspect of the big picture and how the squad has flourished. That Pakistan were missing Shoaib Akhtar, had dropped the tried and trusted Mohammad Sami and were without Malik and Shahid Afridi in Kandy, just goes to show that they now have a pool of players who can be relied upon to come in and perform admirably for their country.

Just how much further can Pakistan go? Well that comes back to my earlier point and much of that will be dependent on how they adapt to English conditions. Shoaib Akhtar had played a bit of county cricket, albeit with not much success but he always rises to the occasion more when playing for his country than picking up easy money in county cricket.

Danish Kaneria is also a bowler I have been very impressed with in recent months and I fancy he could pose England some more problems in England with the back end of the English summer usually offering drier conditions for the spinners that will allow him to get the ball to grip more.

His googly is as dangerous as I’ve ever seen and it will be interesting to see if England’s batsmen will have learnt any lessons from the series in Pakistan. My bet is that they will still struggle against that delivery because he disguises it so well.        

But conclusively, well done to Inzamam and his team and let’s wait and see if they can go up against England and compete in foreign conditions. Do that and then start looking toward Australia!