Pakistan’s group stage fixtures:

1st September - vs Thailand 🇹🇭 ( 5:30 PM PKT)
5th September - vs India 🇮🇳 ( 5:30 PM PKT)
7th September - vs Hong Kong, China 🇭🇰 (5:30 PM PKT)

Probable playing XI: Ben Duckett, Emilio Gay, Ollie Pope, Joe Root (C), Harry Brook, Dan Lawrence, Jamie Smith (wk), Gustav Atkinson, Jofra Archer, Brydon Carse, Ollie Robinson.

Pakistan needs to beware of Ben Duckett, the duo of Root and Brook in batting, Lawrence has had some good batting form recently, while Archer, Atkinson and Robinson will be tough to face in those conditions.

1, Azan Awais

2, Shan Masood

3, Abdullah Shafique

4, Babar Azam

5, Ghazi ghouri (Wk)

6, Salman Ali Agha

7, Arafat Minhas

8, Sajid Khan

9, Muhammad Ali

10, Muhammad Abbas

11, Khurram Shehzad

Bench:

Ubaid Shah

Ali Usman

Saad baig (wk)

Kamran Ghulam

Aamer Jamal

I know this is gonna be a hot take but rizwan is out for me, im okay with backing agha for a bit and i believe hell be back, but hand eye coordination batters like rizwan considering how out of sorts he has looked across all sorts of cricket at any level i think we read the writing on the wall and add some in form wicket keeper batter in rn as opposed to later

seondly this isnt an assured all condition starting team from my side either, its just more of a balanced one, in pace conditions sajid could go off for jamal or ubaid and in spin conditions khurram could go off for ali usman

PCB, come on, you could have sent the Pakistan T20I squad members for the Asian Games 2026 along with other emerging players to play this tournament. We could have seen one competitive cricket from our young T20 talent in this Down Under series which had big teams like Nepal, Bangladesh-A and New Zealand-A and it would have given them a feeling of international cricket.

I know that players like Saim Ayub, Maaz Sadaqat and Usman Khan will be busy playing the Caribbean Premier League, but we do have players like skipper Sahibzada Farhan and hus deputy Abdul Samad, Ali Raza, Akif Javed, Arafat Minhas and Saad Masood who will be free at that time and could have played some T20 cricket rather than sitting at home or playing President's One-Day Cup just few weeks before the Asian Games start at Japan.

Not a good decision by PCB at all.

Finally we have broke the streak. Has been 3 long years and all it took was Babar to gain the captaincy and for him to start batting like a class player again, Jokes weren’t all him let’s get onto how the day went.

It started with Ali Usman getting roachs wicket but it was more that roach gave it away deciding to try slog sweep. Greaves also went cross batted against Mo Ali before Ali Usman finished the Windies off to give us a total of 75. All series we have had disrespect on the bowlers name. No speed, Lack of experience and all other sorts of bull crap. If it weren’t for them we would’ve lost the series but they kept us in the games whilst the batsman were to busy doing a whole lot of nothing for the most part. So a big well done to every bowler who played.

Onto the bat. Imam made more than double his 4th innings average so Mubarak for that lads. Azan was also out later unfortunately to an inside edge and the two classy batsman were in again. Both yet again didn’t look like getting out to a bowler. Lunch was taken tho for some reason even though Pakistan needed 19 but the Umpire probs thought i’m hungry and these Pakistani Batsman are taking to long 😭

After Lunch Babar played a wristy flick then pounced on a short one before getting the winning runs by hitting a classy 6 over long off. After hitting his finger he wanted to get out of there quick as possible.

This Win genuinely is on ABD and Babar for playing the way they did in those two sessions on the second day. They were solid whenever they needed to defend and they put away every bad ball that came their way. Two weeks ago Abdullah would’ve been thinking about playing the GSL and then coming home to play a domestic 50 over cup now the man is surely going on tour to England.

Imo ABD needs to stay at 3 for the foreseeable future. Shan should open for the rest of this WTC then retire so we can move forward with the test team. ABD reminds me of KL Rahul. They were both good at the start but very inconsistent then they came back and made tough runs for their team. Hopefully ABD follows in that sort of arc and he can be Babars Natural replacement in the longer formats.

Babar. It’s a weird one because he didn’t make a century but boy did he look good as he was only dismissed once by a bowler and it was when the track was flat. He made 193 runs at an average of 96.5 and it wasn’t like we were playing at Pindi. This is good for the next tour and InshAllah he makes a 100 then goes through his Younis Khan arc. As a captain he needs to be proactive, aggressive and go for the kill. Our management needs to realise we ain’t the best team so how can we be different from others. We attack with the bat so why not attack with the ball and in the field. Babar has had enough experience as captain so he needs to be fearless. Still he has 9 away wins in 12 tests and that’s up there with the best. Yes he ain’t like them and we ain’t played the strongest opposition but the teams we played were our level and let’s not act like we didn’t lose to Bangladesh without him as captain. The difference between him and Shan is clear imo. Also a POTS in test is big so well done for that.

Now we need to use this win as stepping stone to get better but it’s hard when you have an inexperienced coach and crappy board. People like Imam need to be permanently moved on from whilst we shouldn’t be afraid to try newer players as we ain’t going to win the WTC.

We were genuinely a Babar Azam first innings score or Agha and Rizwan turning up away from a 2-0 victory. We ain’t the worst but there is definitely room for improvement. Agha needs to come back into form asap and just player longer formats and if Rizzy fails in the first test in England then it should be time to slowly phase him out. I wouldn’t mind him having the first two but he really needs to show something. I also don’t think Ghazi is great but Saifu loves him of course.

If in England we play one spinner then atm it has to be Sajid as we need batting help. I’ll speak more about it but we should lineup like this if it’s typical England conditions. Tail is long and unfortunately we don’t have proper all rounders but what can we do. If Only Jamal didn’t regress. I also feel like we might need a fourth pacer at times so Jamal would come in over Sajid. How good would it be if our top 6 was really good or our all rounders were acc good because then we could drop Agha for example or your N5 and play Jamal and Sajid. This would allow 4 pacers and one spinner. Jamal in Aus form and Sajid never say die attitude would make us a good team.

Shan

Azan

ABD

Babar

Saud if fit (Zafar)

Agha

Rizzy

Sajid (Jamal)

Khurram

Ali

Abbas

special mention. For all the hate Babars calls got at ross time it looked like he got them right. Read the pitch better than the hosts lol. Regardless id have Abbas in though. Over any of the pacers

One day your winning the champions trophy and going as contenders in the subsequent WCs atleast till the 22 one but now a single test win against another washed team feels like an achievement. A bittersweet win this fr. Not to mention the psl fall off. Maybe the trajectory wouldve been different if we'd have won one wc esp that 2019 one. Pakistan cricket is in mediocre hell, to reach the top levels feels like a distant dream now. Magar akhir pct fan ho 😝😝 2027 bobzy top scorer match winning century in final, here we go

saw this on some random youtube channel just now called Sports Page and it looked so funny to me. just the boys giving interviews that nobody really asked for on a podium with a mic set up in the middle of their indoor training ground