One clear Essex success story is Stuart Law, who revealed another facet of his many talents yesterday. The Australian has notched up four Championship centuries and has now proved to be the purveyor of a mean leg break. Law accounted for the early breakthroughs with a testing, if slightly rusty, spell of wrist spin. Nottinghamshire battled and scraped their way through a long, hot day's salvage operation here yesterday to redress a wholly inadequate first innings batting performance. As captain, he looks at ease with his team in a way that most of his predecessors have not. The authority Wasim now exhibits is not good news for England.. Like the other Pakistani quicks, he is lean and long-legged, but Wasim looks more mature, less coltish, than the others. It is also conceivable that Pakistan flattered to deceive, although dirty tricks of this kind do not appear to be part of Wasim's repertoire.Before play began he was hiding beneath the long peak of a baseball cap.

But he had the scalps to Ijaz Ahmed, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Asif Mujtaba to boast about All three will be in Pakistan's Test team Maybe Ealham's secret is that he only looks ordinary. Ealham scored runs, but the lasting image is of him stretching forward to Wasim and being beaten for pace outside the offstump.Wasim bowled 13 overs after lunch and the best that can be said for Ealham is that he survived. He celebrated this by hitting Saqlain for two sixes, and eventually scored 57 off 101 balls, but the achievement looks better on the page than it did in the flesh.Without wishing to sound churlish, Ealham's excellent bowling figures (9-3-22-3) were better than his bowling deserved. The other two seamers - Ata-ur-Rehman and Shahid Nazir - were just as short but not so fierce and went for 91 runs off 15 overs David Fulton and Trevor Ward each scored 58 flamboyant runs.