Pakistan’s Test tour of England kicks off today. For thousands of fans around the world, it should be a special moment. Any tour of cricket’s Old Country makes for lovely viewing for fans of any country, but today’s match–and, indeed, the series–is different for more than one reason. First of all, it is a “home” series for Pakistan–and secondly, it is against Pakistan’s old maulers, Australia.

The unmitigated horrors that accompanied Pakistan’s winter tour of Australia and, even more so, the explosive but indecisive PCB inquiries that followed will hopefully be a memory by the end of this tour. Not that Pakistan have any bragging rights when it comes to Australia, but a  decent fight would do instead of sinking to the now-customary whitewash. England should be more of an even battle, but such is world cricket at the moment that nothing is as predictable as Pakistan’s unpredictability.

England, of course, hasn’t hosted a “neutral” Test since 1912, when a Triangular featuring South Africa and Australia kicked off. This makes them the first host nation not to participate in a Test, and it is rather lovely in a surreal sort of way. Now it might be shrewd financially motivated opportunism, or a sort of initiative from the game’s innovators, or just a romantic notion on my behalf, or indeed a mix of all these factors, but watching the Twenty20 double-header in a crowded Birmingham last week brought an appreciation of just how forward-thinking cricket’s administrators can be. It may or may not be coincidental that this takes place in diverse, immigrant-thronged Britain; at any rate, the packed stands were definitely more Bahawalpur than Birmingham.

I was up in England the other week, visiting my cousins in Scunthorpe. Though we saw rather than met most of them in our encounters, Britishtanis are quite charming folk in a jerky, aggressive sort of way–more hyperactive and loud, and a bit more in-your-face when it comes to patriotism of the Old Country (in this case Pakistan) than their Pakistani counterparts. They’re a rather diverse bunch, too–some very well-bred with chest-length beards and prayer caps, others with shaven scalps and chavvy paraphernalia on their arms and heads, and perhaps a few with a mixture of the twain. Anyhow, I’ve always been an unabashed admirer of British dialects and accents, and the Britishtani dialect is one that I’m hoping to master sooner rather than later. There’s a lot of head-wagging and bits of Urdu stuffed clumsily but comfortably into sentences, a healthy amount of cockney, whether genuine or acquired, a whole lot of “bruv’s” and “apnas” (the latter pertaining to any remotely colored member of the Britexpat population), and a few endearingly British expressions such as “jammy git” and “muppet”. Quite the home crowd, in short.

It’s not the only home comfort I’ll be getting this summer. India’s encounters with Sri Lanka are a tried and tired experiment, but I’ll try to follow them simply because of the venue. Sri Lanka earned a bit of respect in every Pakistani’s heart when responding to last year’s Lahore atrocity with almost alarming decency–even going out of the way to compliment the Pakistani bus driver who hotfooted them out of trouble, and offering to tour Pakistan again once their government allowed–but I really fell for the place in the summer of 2009, watching the Pakistan tour from Jeddah and Islamabad at different times. All in all, I’m rather looking forward to the next few months.