by Our Sports Desk

MARK WOOD may have lost the battle with Misbah-ul-Haq yesterday but is ready to go to war as England try to stop Pakistan from taking control in Dubai, as they reached 282 for four.

England huffed and puffed but were unable to stop Misbah giving his team the edge with a calculated century.

Misbah’s first, very significant, contribution was to win his second successive toss in the three-match series — and he then went on to ensure a recovery from 85 for three to 282 for four at stumps, in stands of 93 with Younus Khan (56) and then an unbroken 104 alongside Asad Shafiq.

With a half-century too at the top of the order from Shan Masood, Pakistan took advantage of batting first and moved into position to try to control the match.

Misbah, international cricket’s current elder statesman, used all his experience to withstand England’s best efforts in an often stoic innings — but a characteristically curious one too, which contained five sixes.

Two came in succession off Adil Rashid and then another two in three balls from England’s other spinner Moeen Ali, as he moved from 87 to three figures in the last over before stumps.

Misbah also completed both his 50 and his hundred with reverse-sweeps off Moeen and Wood admitted the 41-year-old undoubtedly had the upper hand, even though he was discomfirted by the short ball on more than one occasion.

“I know I hit Misbah a couple of times,” he said.

“But he’s still out there and has 100 so I guess that’s 1-0 to him and I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

“I had a good battle with him. I tried to be aggressive at him but he dealt with it really well.”

Wood was far from flattered with his figures of one for 26 and James Anderson and Ben Stokes also bowled well enough to pick up more wickets.

He added: “(We’re) pretty frustrated, I guess.

“I think we’ve bowled well as a group.

“I don’t think we can be too disheartened — we can hold our heads up high.

“We’ve put in the effort. They’ve played well — and sometimes that happens. We’ve put in a good, hard shift.”

England’s bowlers were inventive as well as disciplined but to little avail on another surface favouring bat over ball so far.

“As a seam group, I think we did our job,” said Wood. “We set traps and tried different things.

“They attacked the spinners, but I don’t think they bowled badly.

“We hope if we can get a couple early tomorrow we can get into the tail and knock them over quickly.”