Adverse weather conditions could affect second Test in Abu Dhabi

England could yet run into an unlikely adversary in their first Test series in the desert – the weather. Taxi drivers claimed the light drizzle that fell in parts of Dubai on Friday night was the first precipitation for 10 months, and conditions were uncomfortably chilly at Pakistan's afternoon net session on the outskirts of the city as a sandstorm blurred the view of the skyscrapers on the coast. "January and February are the months when there can be some rain here," said Tony Hemming, the Australian who has already started preparing the pitch for the third Test back in Dubai after watching England collapse twice to defeat inside three days on what he insisted was "a belter". The pitches in Abu Dhabi, where the second Test is due to start on Wednesday, have tended to be lower and slower than those in Dubai, although they are also based on clay imported from Pakistan. Both Pakistan's previous Tests there, against Sri Lanka last autumn and South Africa 12 months earlier, have been drawn .