"Given the opportunity we could play in the cricket World Cup and win," he said.. Shoaib Akhtar, the "Rawalpindi Express", has bowled his first ball of the tour, though judging from the excess bulging from beneath his shirt and trousers he is now stopping at all stations. Shoaib Akhtar, the "Rawalpindi Express", has bowled his first ball of the tour, though judging from the excess bulging from beneath his shirt and trousers he is now stopping at all stations. Despite the gentlest of run-ups, a clearly unfit Shoaib still managed to take two wickets, a modest haul compared to the six taken by Saqlain Mushtaq as the off-spinner re-acquainted himself with the average county cricketer's inability to keep a lid on his wily box of tricks. With five first-team players allegedly missing through injury, describing Derbyshire as average is perhaps being over-generous.

Apart from Matthew Dowman, who made 36, and Dominic Cork, who scraped around for 27, most looked out of their depth against the tourists' bowling, which, Saqlain apart, never really attempted to get above third gear. BSkyB, which televised the match, was highly critical of the selection, a viewpoint Cork, the Derbyshire captain, took up with them when he marched over to the commentary box during the second and final stoppage for bad light.The leading wicket-taker against England in the winter Tests, Saqlain has also dominated around the shires for Surrey, and he was helped here by a surprisingly dry pitch. His past success has not made him complacent and, just as Robert Croft did a season ago, he appears to have remodelled his action by occasionally introducing a slight pause before delivery.Whether it helped account for any of his victims was difficult to discern, though he did appear to be trying to give the ball more air. What was apparent though, except to the two batsmen who fell for it, is that his so-called mystery ball ­ a reverse spinner ­ is still working a treat.Karl Krikken, Derbyshire's most experienced player, has probably seen the deception umpteen times before, but that did not prevent him tickling a catch to the wicketkeeper as he played for an off-break. More spectacular still was the way Thomas Lungley, a left-hander, padded up and lost his off-stump.That wicket, which followed Saqlain's dismissal of Cork, lbw sweeping, put him on a hat-trick against the No 11, Lian Wharton. The milestone was not to be, despite the claims of short-leg, who appealed and held the ball up after it appeared to come off the left-hander's pad.

Wharton did not detain Pakistan long, though, eventually falling lbw for a duck as Saqlain claimed the last five wickets to fall.Earlier, before cloud and drizzle transformed an early summer day into something more wintry, his first victim had been a more conventional affair. Luke Sutton had been biding his time without alarm when he got his footwork in a tangle, a mistake that resulted in a pad-bat catch to Imran Farhat at silly point. After lunch, Imran took another catch in the same position, this time off a bottom-edge as Nathan Dumelow attempted to break Saqlain's dripping accuracy by trying to slog-sweep him.It was to that boundary that Dowman had clipped his first ball to get off the mark. A sumptuous shot, he looked a fine player until bamboozled by a slow full toss from Shoaib which hit his stumps about halfway up.After being reported for throwing by the umpires Peter Willey, who was standing here yesterday, and Darrell Hair in Perth 18 months ago, Shoaib is meant to have remodelled his action, though Pakistan say the change has been necessary to prevent other injuries rather than cure an arm bent not from underhand illegality but hypermobile joints.Judging from the evidence here the changes appear to amount to a much slower approach and much smaller leap than was the case during the 1999 World Cup, when he was clocked at 97mph. With slow pitches and cold weather about, not to mention the surplus weight, the speed gun is not likely to be jolted.. While Manchester City were totting up the £15m cost of relegation from the Premiership yesterday and their chairman, David Bernstein, was vowing that his club would bounce straight back, there was less certainty about the long-term job security of Joe Royle. While Manchester City were totting up the £15m cost of relegation from the Premiership yesterday and their chairman, David Bernstein, was vowing that his club would bounce straight back, there was less certainty about the long-term job security of Joe Royle. The City manager's future appears to be safe under the current regime, as long as he makes a positive start to next season's First Division campaign.