LONDON-- England were 222 for four wickets in reply to Pakistan's 234 all out at the end of the second day of the third and final test in Sharjah on Monday.
  James Taylor, seeking a maiden test century, was unbeaten on 74 and Jonny Bairstow was 37 not out.
  Their stand for the fifth wicket was worth 83 at the close.
  Pakistan, hoping to maintain their impressive record since moving matches to the United Arab Emirates, won the second test after the first was drawn.
  England eventually had the better of a slow day's play, in which only 48 runs came in the middle session.
  Starting the day at four for no wicket, they lost Moeen Ali cheaply for 14, falling with a cross-batted slog at Shoaib Malik.
  That was the only wicket to fall before lunch, although Alastair Cook and then Joe Root perished in quick succession soon after the interval.
  Cook was outsmarted again by Yasir Shah, who had dismissed him in both innings of the previous test.
  The England captain was one run short of his 46th test fifty when he tried to glance a delivery from the leg spinner but only managed to deflect it onto his pads before Azhar Ali took the catch at forward short leg.
  Root (four) soon joined him back in the pavilion after wicket-keeper Sarfraz Ahmed took a low, one-handed catch off Rahat Ali to leave England 97 for three.
  Taylor, returning to test cricket after an absence of three years, and Ian Bell saw them through to tea, only for Bell to be smartly stumped off Yasir for 40.
  That was Pakistan's last success of the day, however, Bairstow accompanying Taylor through to the close to leave England in the driving seat.

MEXICO CITY-- Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen, who was not even born last time Formula One raced in Mexico, set the pace in first practice as the sport returned to the country after a 23-year absence on Friday.
  The 18-year-old Dutch driver, whose father Jos made his F1 debut two years after the last grand prix in Mexico City in 1992, lapped the Hermanos Rodriguez circuit in a best time of one minute 25.990 seconds.
  He appeared to cut a corner on the Esses sequence in doing so, however.
  Red Bull's Russian Daniil Kvyat, also born two years after Britain's Nigel Mansell won that 1992 race, was second fastest 0.305 behind in a Renault-powered one-two at the top of the timesheets.
  Britain's Lewis Hamilton, who took his third world championship last Sunday in Texas, was only 11th fastest and told to cool his brakes.
  His Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg, who is fighting Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel for second place overall with three races remaining, was sixth despite his car's rear brakes catching fire.
  The German headed back to the pits with flaming wheels but returned shortly before the end of the session.
  Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen and Vettel were third and fourth fastest.
  Mercedes have also won the constructors' championship, leaving Sunday's race with nothing to play for other than the race win and precious points for those further down the standings.
  The high-altitude circuit, much revamped from the old one with the daunting Peraltada curve now cut in half, has one of the longest straights on the calendar and Friday's start to practice was in damp conditions.
  "It's so slippery everywhere, it's like there's oil," commented Verstappen over the radio.
  Spectators queued outside from early on, amid a heavy police presence and the usual traffic gridlock, to get a glimpse of the cars and home favourite Sergio Perez.
  Mexico's only current Formula One driver, who is likely to be joined on the grid by Esteban Gutierrez next season, was ninth fastest.

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LONDON-- Suspended UEFA head Michel Platini said on Thursday he was the only person with the vision to lead soccer's world governing body FIFA out of a corruption scandal but there were opponents who "don't want to give football back to the players".
  "I'm not in a penal colony or a Siberian Gulag," the European soccer authority chief said of a 90-day provisional suspension excluding him from campaigning for February elections to the FIFA presidency. "I'm waiting for events to unfold."
  FIFA has been embroiled in a widening corruption scandal since 14 soccer officials and sports marketing executives were indicted by the United States in May.
  Since then, Swiss authorities have opened their own investigation into FIFA's activities and FIFA's own Ethics Committee has suspended both President Sepp Blatter and Platini, who had been favourite to replace him. Platini denies wrongdoing and is fighting the suspension.
  "People want to prevent me running because they know that I have every chance of winning," Platini, one of seven candidates in the race for the presidency, said in interview published by British newspaper the Daily Telegraph and the Swiss French-language Le Matin.
  Platini portrayed himself as the man to bring world soccer back to its sporting roots.
  "I get the impression they don't want a former player running FIFA, as if they don't want to give football back to the players. But I am the only one who has a vision right across football," he said, citing his record as player, France coach and UEFA president.
  "I am, in all modesty, the best-placed person to run world football."
  Platini and Blatter have been provisionally banned while FIFA investigates a payment of 2 million Swiss francs ($2.1 million) the Frenchman received from FIFA in 2011.
  The Swiss attorney general's office has initiated criminal proceedings against Blatter over the payment in 2011 and says that Platini is "between a witness and an accused person".
  The payment, which Platini said was for work done for FIFA between 1998 and 2002, was made shortly before a FIFA election which Blatter won in 2011 and raised questions as to why the Frenchman had waited nine years to be paid.
  "People have recently been bringing up that my debt wasn't detailed in the FIFA accounts," Platini said. "It was put before two specialist committees on the subject and was quite obviously reviewed by the statutory auditor.
  "So to be clear: was there work provided? Yes. Is an oral contract legal in Switzerland? Yes. Did I have the right to reclaim my money even nine years later? Yes. Did I produce a proper invoice as FIFA required? Yes. Was the money declared to the taxman? Yes."
  He described his ban as disproportionate.
  "This suspension prevents me from campaigning and fighting on an equal footing. Even if I cannot go out campaigning, I fully consider myself a candidate," he said.