Pakistan has announced their squad for the upcoming second test against Australia where Mohammad Rizwan will be replacing Sarfaraz Ahmed.
Pakistan squad for Australia second Test
Pakistan has announced their 12-member squad for the Australia second Test which features the replacement of wicketkeeper Sarfaraz Ahmed by Mohammad Rizwan.
The side is scheduled to play in the three-match Test series in Pakistan tour of Australia where the first test concluded with the victory of the home side by 360 runs.
Pakistan side had made changes due to injury concerns, Khurram was ruled out of the squad due to a rib stress fracture. Noman Ali was also ruled out due to his diagnosis of appendicitis.
On this occasion, Pakistan had made its third change in the squad where Rizwan is included. Faheem Ashraf will also miss out after his poor performance in
Sarfaraz Khan has been sidelined from the test squad after his weak performance in the first test at Perth. He scored only 7 runs in both the innings where Mitchell Starc troubled him with the ball.
Sarfaraz’s selection in the squad has received lots of criticism in Australian conditions. He has scored 239 runs in 10 innings with an average of 29.87. Pakistan Shan Masood had stated that Sarfaraz was backed due to his performance in domestic cricket and the commitment he brought to the game.
While speaking about the player he said, “I wouldn’t think that that one change would have changed the whole course of the game. The reason to play Sarfaraz was pretty much the same [as the reason to play Aamer Jamal and Khurram Shahzad].”
“People go back to stats and Rizwan averages very well in SENA. Firstly there’s no competition between the two. They’re equally important to the team. Any competition they have is healthy competition.”
“We know what Rizwan has done but we gave Sarfaraz the benefit because he averaged 56.50 on his last tour here in 2016. Yes, that’s been quite a while but he’s also played red ball consistently in the Quaid-e-Azam trophy in the last few years,” said Masood.
“Rizwan just came from the World Cup, a lot of white-ball cricket. And he also had a gap in red-ball cricket since Sarfaraz took over from him for the New Zealand series.”
“Sarfaraz had an outstanding performance there and Rizwan hadn’t played a lot of red-ball cricket. So there was a method to it. He’s been there, he played red-ball cricket.”
“Karachi had a very good season where he was the tournament’s MVP, and that allowed us to get a player like Rizwan into shape. If I had it my way, I’d ideally like both to play but that’s not possible.”
“Now we think Rizwan is ready and we can give Saifi that little bit of break to recuperate and come back,” Masood added.
Pakistan will be playing their second test on December 28 at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Pakistan squad for the second Test
Imam-Ul-Haq, Abdullah Shafique, Shan Masood (c), Babar Azam, Saud Shakeel, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Salman Ali Agha, Shaheen Afridi, Hasan Ali, Mir Hamza, Aamir Jamal, Sajid Khan.
