If the pitch is poor, then it doesn’t matter how good the players are.

The game will suffer and so will the fans.

Such is the situation in Rawalpindi.

The pitch at Rawalpindi is coming in for criticism as bat continues to dominate ball. Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images.

After two days of the first Test, Pakistan’s score stood at 181-0 in reply to England’s first innings 657.

If my maths are right, and they’re often wrong, that’s 838 runs for the loss of 10 wickets.

Add in the 1,187 runs scored for the loss of 14 wickets in the previous Test played at the ground, between Pakistan and Australia in March, and that’s 2,025 runs for 24 wickets across seven days.

Wake me up before you go-go, as George Michael once put it, or, as Fred Trueman jested of one sedate surface, “I’ve seen more life in a tramp’s vest.”

Ben Stokes and his England team need good pitches to play on for "Bazball" to realise its full potential. Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images.

Fred would probably be cancelled nowadays - no, let me restate that, he would be cancelled - so it’s just as well that he looks down from heaven.

These days, you can’t say boo to a goose without risking the wrath of the geese population, and what Fred would say about this particular pitch in Rawalpindi doesn’t bear thinking about - words rhyming with “duck”, rather than “goose”, would doubtless prevail.

Fred didn’t much like the sub-continent, once quipping that he’d heard about a deadly snake which after a while you go looking for. Perhaps that fate might have been preferable to toiling in the way of England’s bowlers on Friday, who might have opted for death by snakebite rather than the death by a thousand cuts being administered by Pakistan’s opening batsmen Abdullah Shafique and Iman-ul-Haq, who played traditional Test cricket - no “Bazball” for them - and played it well.

At least there are some old-timers out there still prepared to tell it how it is, which brings us to Ramiz Raja, chair of the Pakistan Cricket Board. One of the great men of Pakistan cricket, and a batsman good enough to play 57 Tests in the Eighties and Nineties, Ramiz described this pitch as “embarrassing” and said that Pakistan are “in the dark ages in terms of pitch preparation”.

“It is embarrassing for us, especially when you have a cricketer as chairman,” he said.

“This is not a good advert for cricket, and we’re a better cricketing nation than this.”

Ramiz, 60, believes it will take at least another season for the quality of pitches to start improving after a decade without Test cricket in Pakistan.

When he arrived as chairman, he talked about bringing in drop-in pitches but believes the cost is prohibitive.

“Drop-in pitches are extremely expensive,” said Ramiz, adding that “it’s not an issue of leaving grass on the pitch - the grass looks good from the point of view of optics. We need to create bounce.”

A bit like a bad haircut, it might be best to get rid of the whole thing and start again in Rawalpindi. Not long ago, it was actually regarded as a spicy surface; now it is about as spicy as last week’s curry, the blandest of offerings that benefits no one.

After England’s record-breaking blitz on day one, when they scored 506-4 from 75 overs, punters and pundits alike have been asking whether “Bazball” is changing the face of Test cricket.

Clearly so, but it only takes a pudding like ‘Pindi’ to remind one that the pitch is everything in terms of entertainment.

Pakistan weren’t going to go smashing it around - or at least not yet - as they set about making inroads into a such a big deficit.

So when the scoring rate is normal and there is nothing to interest seamer or spinner, there is usually nothing to interest the crowd either.

A “good pitch” should never be mistaken for a “flat pitch”, for they are totally different.

A flat pitch is one on which batsmen make hay and bowlers make plans to change their careers.

A good pitch offers something for everyone - batsman and bowler – and, as importantly, something for the crowd.

These days, there is an existential threat to Test cricket in terms of the franchise tournaments springing up all over.

From the Alaskan Premier League to the Zanzibar Challenge (okay, I made those up), there is so much white-ball cricket - and so much money involved - that players heads are inevitably turned.

To protect the primacy of Test cricket, the positive intent shown by England is perfect but it must be complemented by quality pitches.

Otherwise, folk will switch off.

Pakistan v England: Pitches must be better than the one in 'Pindi' for Test cricket to thrive - Chris Waters