England’s fast-bowling consultant James Anderson will be on the ground in Multan in time for the second day of the first Test against Pakistan, fresh from a week of merry-making in a golfer’s paradise, having played in the Dunhill Links.

Alongside professional golfer Sam Bairstow (a Yorkshireman, but no relation to Jonny), he played the Old Course at St Andrews, as well as nearby Kingsbarns and Carnoustie. The pair finished tied for 78th, on 21 under par.

Under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes, tour preparation has been turned on its head – with warm-up fixtures almost entirely eschewed – and golf has taken up an even bigger chunk of an English cricketer’s diary than before. But even by their convention-busting standards, this was a novel approach.

As ever, England played it cool. In an unusually tetchy interview with Sky, McCullum pointed out that Anderson, not even three months into his playing retirement, is a consultant not a full-time coach. “We will take what we can get when we can get it,” he said, adding that there would be less noise around the situation if Anderson had been relaxing with his family, rather than relaxing on the golf course. He seemed to recognise that the optics are not great.

Test cricket in Pakistan is a slow-burn and games, let alone series, are not often won or lost on the opening day. Victory can be secured after the opposition racks up massive scores. But by the time Anderson steps foot inside the Multan Cricket Stadium, England will have a mountain to climb in the first Test. They lost a tough toss on a flat pitch and stuck manfully to their task throughout the opening day, but had no answers to centurions Abdullah Shafique and Shan Masood until it was too late. It is a measure of their doggedness and commitment that they prised both out in the evening session, their best of the day. Later, Chris Woakes’s wicket of Babar Azam with the new ball was their reward.

The schedule here was already stacked against England leading into this series. Eight days earlier, four members of the XI (including wicketkeeper Jamie Smith and debutant Brydon Carse), plus two more members of the touring party, were playing Australia in blustery Bristol, where temperatures were more than 20 degrees lower than Multan. So not only was there so little time between a summer of high-intensity cricket that there was no time for a warm-up game or even a camp in Abu Dhabi, but a significant acclimatisation from autumnal chill to raw heat was required. The first day in the dirt was always going to be brutal – and it was.

With that context, England had to make their life easier in any way possible, and that includes having your fast-bowling guru on the ground. While they stuck at it, England’s inexperience with the ball did tell. None of the three seamers selected have played in Pakistan before, with Woakes playing his first Test in Asia since 2016, Gus Atkinson playing away from home for the first time, and Carse making his debut. Neither of the two quicks on the bench, Matthew Potts and Olly Stone, have toured Pakistan before, either.

There has been a total turnover of the pace attack that brought England so much success in 2022, when they won 3-0 in Pakistan. Anderson has retired, Ollie Robinson has been dropped (he uploaded a video of himself watching the action from an airport lounge), while Mark Wood and Stokes are both injured.

Anderson’s only two Tests in Pakistan came on that 2022 tour, when he took eight wickets at an average of 18.5 and, crucially, an economy of 2.2. But he was on the tour there in 2005, watching the likes of Shoaib Akhtar up close, and has 92 Test wickets in Asia (as many as any visiting bowler, tied with Dale Steyn).

By all accounts, he has made an excellent start to life as a coach. Insiders praise the immediate impact he had on the raw 20-year-old Josh Hull during the series against Sri Lanka, educating him on the wobble seam, a key part of the Test seamer’s armoury now. Wood credited him for a destructive spell against West Indies at Edgbaston.

There is no guarantee that Anderson’s knowledge of bowling in these conditions, which is as rich as any Englishman’s, would have improved the current crop of bowlers’ output had he been present at their three training days. McCullum was quick to point out that Anderson does have a WhatsApp group with the bowlers on the tour, which he used to pass on golden nuggets, but that is clearly no substitute for being on the ground. Surely, if there was one time he could add value in this series, it was before a single ball was bowled.

Anderson is currently in a post-career limbo. He has not officially retired from first-class cricket, and is doing a bit of coaching alongside some media work while he works out what the second chapter of his life looks like. He is within his rights to let his hair down and play some golf, especially at a bucket-list event like the Dunhill (Kevin Pietersen, who also played, describes it as “the best week of the year”, with the invitation “the only email that gets urgent attention and a response”). Equally, England’s relaxed approach is part of the reason why players and coaches are so keen to be involved.

But surely, given the challenge facing England on this tour, it had to be one or the other for Anderson, rather than arriving in Pakistan too late for his most important bit of work.