RAWALPINDI (The Thursday Times) — Pakistan turn to England on Tuesday in the second match of their home ODI tri-series, a fixture that marks just the second men’s ODI series England have played in Pakistan since 2005, after a 37-run win over Sri Lanka in the tournament opener at the same ground.
Shaheen Shah Afridi’s side will go in buoyed by Salman Agha’s century in that win, and by a pace attack that shared nine wickets between them to pull off a late Sri Lankan collapse. Nine players who featured in the preceding T20I series against Sri Lanka — which Pakistan led 2-0 before a dead-rubber defeat in the third game denied them a whitewash — carry over into the ODI squad, with Babar Azam retained in the middle order alongside Agha.
The squad’s most notable absence remains Mohammad Rizwan, left out while Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency continues to question him, along with Imam-ul-Haq, over alleged dressing-room leaks during the team’s tour of England earlier this year. Rizwan has separately challenged the agency’s summons in the Lahore High Court, and the PCB has opened its own internal disciplinary inquiry; the board has declined to comment further while both processes continue. Saad Baig deputised behind the stumps against Sri Lanka and is set to keep wicket again in his absence.
England arrive without their own first-choice wicketkeeper, Jos Buttler, who is out recovering from hamstring surgery, and without Jacob Bethell, sidelined by a knee injury. Harry Brook leads a squad reshuffled around those absences, with Sam Curran back from groin surgery and Adil Rashid returning after a hand injury; Mason Crane, James Coles and Henry Crocombe are all in line for possible ODI debuts. Head coach Mike Hesson said this week that Pakistan had made clear progress in the format over the past six months and would need to maintain it against two capable opponents across the tri-series.
Tuesday’s match is the second of six group-stage games before the final at Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, on October 31; Sri Lanka play England in the tri-series’ third match at Rawalpindi on Thursday, before the competition moves to Lahore for its second half later in the month.∎
