The focus of the last week has been centred almost exclusively on Pakistan's panicked reshuffle, as they sent home a whopping seven players from England, as well as their head coach and bowling coach, and flew in reinforcements. Curiously, though, it is a player who was neither released nor chucked in at short notice that will likely experience some of the sharpest scrutiny in Edgbaston.
Ghazi Ghori had been applying gentle pressure on Mohammad Rizwan in Pakistan's set-up, making his international debut in an ODI against Bangladesh before playing all three matches in a home visit of Australia, all earlier this year. There was a century partnership with Babar Azam in the first ODI against Australia that helped Pakistan to victory in a nervy chase.
However, they were merely encouraging signs for Pakistan's future keeping depth; after all Rizwan had only had the ODI captaincy taken from him the previous year, and boasted the highest Test average of all Pakistan batters over the past 30 months. He was also - is, in fact - the best wicketkeeper in Pakistan, and the best they have produced this century.
Days after the Lord's Test, though, he had been sent back home in disgrace, his Pakistan career in the balance. It puts his understudy in an especially delicate position, tasked with filling Rizwan's big shoes in conditions unfamiliar to him, at a time when the PCB's wrath is at its most venomous. It is not exactly the most nourishing environment in which to make one's Test debut, as Ghori looks set to do this week at Edgbaston.
It is precisely that which worries his former coach Hanif Malik. Malik, who was Pakistan's batting coach until June, has been following events from afar in the Caribbean, where he's currently working with Jamaica Kingsmen at the CPL. He has worked with Ghori since his Under-19 days, and Ghori has continued to train at Malik's high-performance academy in Karachi. He worked, according to Malik, "harder than everyone else", but does not believe that should have propelled him into a Test debut just yet.
"I had aimed for mid-2027 as the point when he'd be ready for Test cricket," Malik told Cricinfo. "He's been preparing his mindset to be ready for Test cricket. We rushed him a bit by playing ODIs in Bangladesh earlier this year. What would have been better for him was to travel with the Shaheens [Pakistan A] and play another full first-class season. It is the circumstances of the national side rather than his stage of development which has resulted in that time coming earlier."
Perhaps Ghori will be afforded the leniency of reduced expectations with the bat; after all, the only reason Rizwan has been sent home is some curious shot selection and a drop in his recent batting numbers. Behind the stumps, though, there is no hiding place. In a series that has been dominated by medium-fast bowlers, the ability to keep up to the stumps to pace can make or break a bowling plan. Rizwan's success in doing that to Mohammad Abbas saw Joe Root, England's best batter, largely neutralised at Lord's, trapped in his crease against the late nipping ball.
Ghori would be expected to replicate that. It is something Malik said he had learned to do since his U-19 days, even if the stage here is rather more high-stakes than that. "I don't think it will be a new thing for him. I expect him to initially stand back to Abbas with the harder new ball, but he will come up when required. The difficulties of keeping up only starts when a bowler starts hitting 135kph. But because Pakistan don't have those pace bowlers that consistently go above that, it shouldn't become an issue for him."
Malik has been worrying about the mental toll all of this could take on a 23-year-old who has never dealt with anywhere near so much pressure. "He's not yet built up enough mental toughness to deal with how extremely tense the situation is," Malik said. "He will have to put the conversations around him out of his mind. When he was selected in the ODIs, the criticism affected him. He has learned to handle that. It'll probably be harder for him if Pakistan field first. Because he's playing a Test for the first time and the kind of pressure that has been built around Pakistan over the past week."
Encouragingly, Malik was far less concerned about from a technical point of view. He has seen Ghori's wicketkeeping improve steadily over the years in Karachi, a city that has churned out wicketkeepers for Pakistan over the generations. Most importantly, he saw Ghori's keeping as a separate, primary skill, something Malik complained had almost gone out of the game.
"In modern-day cricket, the skill of wicketkeeping has been completely devalued and disregarded. Anyone who can collect a few balls becomes a wicketkeeper," he said. "There's a certain flair to wicketkeeping, which you can see in Rizwan, and which Ghori also has. If you imagine the great wicketkeepers, they have a certain grace with which they collect the ball, or dive, or something that is a unique identifier of their keeping. That is what makes a wicketkeeper in my view.
"In Pakistan, Ghori is perhaps the only one who's a wicketkeeper first, and batter second. Otherwise, we just rate them in terms of their batting, so even talented wicketkeepers have lost interest in their keeping game."
Rizwan's removal may have opened the door for Ghori, but it's a no-brainer that judging keepers primarily by their run-scoring could have pernicious effects downstream. Ghori, too, is an unconventional stroke-player - "think of the typical kind of Karachi wicketkeeper who does a bit of everything," as Malik put it.
He uses the sweep and reverse sweep, finding unusual angles on the pitch by trying shots most players don't. After the dim view the PCB took of Rizwan's ungainly hoick at Lord's, however, it's unlikely a fresh keeper will want to stand out with their own choices of shot.
All of it builds up to a player that has begun to blossom, only to be ripped out of its nursery and put on display ahead of time. Ghori averages over 41 in first-class cricket, with the red-ball game his priority. But he has played just 26 first-class matches, been with the international side too briefly, and thrust into a role he should have been gently seasoned for.
That, in Malik's opinion, is the mistake Pakistan cannot help but make time and again.
"All the uprooting and upheaval we're doing has resulted in players that have a lot of skills, but they're underprepared. Because we don't give them the time to be prepared," he said. "So what do you expect of them? It's like sending matriculation kids and expecting them to excel in Master's exams. It's hardly the players' fault because their development phase isn't complete.
"Saim [Ayub], for example, came back to the CPL, and was training, and he's suddenly been called back again. They don't have the time to train. We just play international matches, which are high-intensity. They need to be prepared one level below. I think Pakistan cricket only has a crisis of preparation, because there's no culture of preparation. Players think knocking about in the nets is training. That's not it. Training means you need a 24-hour routine. In this environment, they're not getting that."
Even as he took his place behind the stumps in a training session on Friday, Ghori had a good look around the ground. He was, of course, merely taking in the surroundings at a place that is likely to be the site of his Test debut. When, in a couple of days, those stands heave and the atmosphere crackles, one can only hope it isn't those surroundings that swallow him whole instead.