MULTAN — The magnitude of England’s victory in Multan was easy to overlook given how quickly, and easily, it was sealed on the fifth and final morning.

Just 96 minutes were needed to gain the final three wickets and wrap up this first Test by the comprehensive margin of an innings and 47 runs.

Yet this doesn’t even tell half the story of a contest that will be remembered for years to come for a whole host of reasons.

One of them was the fact Pakistan became the first team in 147 years of Test cricket to lose after posting a first-innings score of 500 or more.

Another was the draw-dropping response, a reply of historic proportions as the tourists piled up 823 for seven declared – the fourth-highest total in Test history and England’s biggest since 1938.

Powered by an England-record partnership of 454 by Joe Root and Harry Brook, this monster total laid the foundations for what was to follow.

Brook’s 317, the first triple century by an Englishman since 1990, and Root’s 262, an innings that saw him overtake Sir Alastair Cook to become his country’s all-time leading runscorer, were phenomenal efforts of skill, stamina and concentration.

All this was possible in part because of a pitch so flat that after England’s victory former captain Michael Atherton was moved to call it “shocking”.

He added: “The only point about Test match and first-class cricket stretched over four or five days is that the pitch should change and offer a balance between bat and ball. Despite the fact there was a result that was not a good pitch.”

All the more impressive then that a bowling attack that looked toothless on day one of this match found a way to get 20 wickets when there was minimal, if any, deterioration in the surface.

The scoreboard pressure borne of a 267-run first-innings lead played on Pakistan’s frailties that had come from defeats in their previous five Tests, England striking with the first ball of their second innings to spark a collapse that left the hosts 82 for six on the fourth evening.

However, it took a special effort to open up those cracks in Pakistan’s psyche.

It’s also easy to forget that England did all this on the back of minimal preparation that saw them only land in the country five days before the start of the series, in searing 35C heat that left many of their players in a state of exhaustion and, perhaps most impressively of all, without Ben Stokes, their injured captain and talisman.

The 28-day turnaround between the defeat by Sri Lanka at The Oval last month and the start of this match was the shortest between the final Test of the summer and start of the winter in England’s history.

And four of the XI who took the field in Multan – Ben Duckett, Brook, Jamie Smith and Brydon Carse – also played in the final ODI against Australia in Bristol that took place just three days before the squad left for Pakistan last week.

All that – the slow start, the records, the defiance of conditions, heat and a schedule that set up this group of players to fail – is why Multan 2024 will go down as one of England’s finest overseas Test wins.

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It’s also why Chris Woakes, playing his first away Test in two-and-a-half years, argued this was as good as it gets for an England cricketer. “It really is,” he said. “It probably hasn’t sunk in what we’ve achieved there. I was out there when we scored 800 and I was just like ‘this doesn’t seem real, to be scoring 800 in a Test match’. I’ve never seen us getting anywhere near.

“It seems a bit strange to have them 50 for five then, it didn’t seem real, like we’d actually done that. It’s an incredible achievement.”

Carse, the quickest bowler from either side during a brilliant performance on debut that saw him take four wickets, outlined just how tough things were for England’s players.

“The heat has been probably the biggest challenge,” he said. “The last month playing cricket in England in September is very different to playing out here but we’ve got a great medical staff, constantly topping us up with fluids, gels and then at the end of the day’s play there are ice baths, recovery pumps.

“We make sure we’re fuelling a lot because, in this heat, it can be difficult to get food down between sessions.

“We’ve got all the different resources up there. We’ve got a great team behind the scenes and it’s been a massive effort across the five days.”

What makes this win even more incredible is the fact that this win came after both teams had scored a combined 1,379 first-innings runs in 299 overs across most of the first four days. England then needed just 54.5 overs to rout Pakistan in their second innings.

And that’s despite dropping four catches, with the last by stand-in captain Ollie Pope capping a miserable match for him on a personal level after he had registered a two-ball duck at the start of his team’s record-breaking innings.

This is the latest in a long line of extraordinary contests in the Bazball era. But where does this, the 20th win in 30 Tests under coach Brendon McCullum, rank?

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It probably falls short of the heist of Hyderabad back in January, when the Bazballers overcame a huge first-innings deficit to inflict only the fourth home Test defeat on India in 12 years.

Rawalpindi 2022, when England beat Pakistan late on the final day on a pitch similarly flat as this is also just ahead of this, if only because the hosts were not as vulnerable then and because it set up a 3-0 series whitewash.

But there’s little else that tops what England achieved here over the past five days. And there have been many other great results, not least beating India at Edgbaston in 2022 by chasing down 378, the home Ashes wins against Australia at Headingley and The Oval last year and the match that sparked Bazball – the defeat of New Zealand, then world Test champions, at Trent Bridge in 2022 thanks to Jonny Bairstow’s final-session blitz that saw him post a 77-ball hundred to help his team chase down 299 in 72 overs.

It says much about how special this England team are that they just keep confounding expectations and subverting cricketing norms. This undoubtedly won’t be the last time they pull off something frankly absurd.

It sure seems like a long time ago since we were all moaning about James Anderson, now England’s bowling consultant, missing the start of this tour to play golf at St Andrews.