Pakistan cricket team to return home after West Indies tour on August 27

ISLAMABAD: The national cricket team will arrive in Pakistan on August 27 after winning the T20I series and levelling the two-match Test series against hosts West Indies, Geo News reported.

Sources privy to the matter said that the Pakistani cricket squad will land at the Lahore airport at night between Thursday and Friday (August 27). They will travel from Jamaica to Pakistan via London.

However, Azhar Ali, Yasir Shah, Muhammad Abbas and Naseem Shah will not return home as Yasir and Naseem will travel to Antigua to participate in the Caribbean Premier League, while Abbas and Azhar will stay in London to play county cricket.

Unique hallmark for Pakistan team

The Test series between Pakistan and West Indies marked a unique hallmark for the green shirts as they became the only team that twice won a Test after an extremely poor start by losing three wickets for only two runs or less in the first innings of a match.

Previously, Pakistan won a Karachi Test against India in 2006 with the same dismal performance at the beginning of the innings.

Pakistan continued its winning streak in the West Indies tour as the side has not lost a single multi-match bilateral series in any format against the hosts since 2000. Pakistan has played 20 such series since 2000.

The Test series is particularly memorable for pacer Shaheen Shah Afridi who got his career-best figure of 10 for 94, trailing Muhammed Asif who got 11 for 71 against Sri Lanka in Kandy in 2006.

Shaheen Afridi grabs 18 wickets in two Tests

Afridi also became the fourth-youngest pacer to grab a ten-wicket haul in a Test. In this record, he trails Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Mohammad Zahid. Two pacers younger than him who claimed a ten-wicket Test record are Irfan Pathan and Kagiso Rabada.

Abbas and Hasan Ali also became the other Pakistani bowlers who took ten wickets in a Test during this period.

Shaheen Afridi's 18 wickets in the two Tests also made him prominent with the joint second-most wicket-taker in a two-match Test series, after Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed.

Pakistani pacers claimed 66 wickets in the Test series - a second-highest for a two-Test series. The highest number of wickets, 67, was taken by pacers when India toured New Zealand in 2013-14. Spinners could take only four wickets.

In the second Test, Pakistan maintained a 6.43 run rate that is the third highest run rate for any Test team. Australia has the highest run rate of 7.53 when it defeated Pakistan in Sydney in January 2017, followed by South Africa that hit a 6.80 run rate in a Test series against Zimbabwe in 2005.