STUART Broad admitted the England attack were grateful for losing the toss after skittling Pakistan out for 72 on day one of the second Test at Edgbaston.

After their 80 all out at Trent Bridge seven days ago, Pakistan were again in grave danger of collapsing to their lowest ever total when they lurched to 37 for six at lunch.

In the end, they instead merely registered a new worst against England for the second time in under a week.

James Anderson (four for 20) and Broad (four for 38) did the most damage as all Pakistan’s batsmen found scoring opportunities very hard to come by.

Broad said: “I think we were going to bat but as a bowling unit, with the conditions around, we certainly weren’t disappointed when the toss was lost.

“After the way we performed at Trent Bridge, when wickets came quite quickly for us, we were very conscious that we just wanted to build pressure and bowl maidens here and we were fortunate that we were able to do that and the wickets came our way.”

Broad added: “It looked quite hard to drive early, I thought the Pakistan batsmen were quite watchful early on and we had to try to make them play and come out of their shells.

“I think we had pretty clear plans, we had good communication and it worked out for us.

“Credit to the bowling unit, we knew we had to build pressure.”