Pakistan rest Azhar Ali for Sri Lanka ODIs

KARACHI: Pakistan rested Azhar Ali for the five-match one-day series against Sri Lanka starting in Dubai next week to give the opener time to recover from a knee problem, selectors said on Friday.

The 32-year-old is featuring in the second and final Test in Dubai on Friday only after having injections to relieve the pain.

Pakistan have made only one change from the side which won the Champions Trophy in England in June this year, bringing in uncapped 21-year-old opener Imam-ul-Haq.

Imam is the nephew of former Pakistan captain Inzamam, who now heads the selection committee.

“Imam has been selected in the squad keeping his performance in the domestic circuit in view and to give a chance to a youngster in the home conditions,” said a Pakistan Cricket Board release.

Imam had featured in the 2014 Junior World Cup held in the United Arab Emirates.

Sarfraz Ahmed will lead the side.

The matches are to be played in Dubai on October 13, Abu Dhabi (October 16 and 18) and Sharjah (October 20 and 23).

Relieved of the captaincy, Azhar played some of his most assured ODI innings in Champions Trophy, including fifties in the semi-final and the final. But the knee problem that almost ruled him out of the Test series is one that the selectors want to rest.

Imam has been on the selectors’ radar for a few seasons now. He was selected in the Islamabad side for the 50-over Pakistan Cup in 2016, filling in for Misbah-ul-Haq. He scored a century in his first game. But questions will be asked about his inclusion on the back of what has been, at best, lukewarm form in the 50-over format. He played four games in the National One-Day Cup in January this year for Lahore Whites and scored only 96 runs, including an innings of 49. A month earlier in a National One-Day Cup for department sides, he scored 318 runs at 35.33 for Habib Bank.

Over the last three years, Imam has played 24 List A games; in the last 10 months, he has played 13 matches, scoring 414 at 31.84.

According to some board officials, in the past Inzamam had expressed reluctance in pushing Imam into the national fold — in one of his first selections ahead of the England tour last year, he said: “I’ve seen his [Imam’s] first-class record, he hasn’t scored many runs in this season and I have not selected him. That should be the way.”

It would seem that has changed over the last year. “If you say he is my nephew then it was difficult,” Inzamam said of the selection in Dubai on the first day of the second Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. “But if you look at his performances then I thought it’s ok. We wanted to keep the Champions Trophy team, to continue that, but unfortunately Azhar has a knee injury through which we had to bring an opener up. In my view, of all the openers who have performed recently, he was pretty good in that and deserves the pick.”

The performances Inzamam spoke of have mostly been in the four-day game. Imam scored 848 runs at 49.88 in the last Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, with three hundreds, including a double-century, for HBL. He has opened this season with a hundred for HBL as well, against FATA at the end of last month.

“We have to see what the talent is, what he can do,” Inzamam said. “He scored two hundreds in an Under-23 tournament. Then recently in Sialkot he scored a hundred, so we look at performances but also how much talent a player has. Mickey [Arthur] and Sarfraz [Ahmed] and others were also involved in this decision. We give all the names but there is a discussion. So it would be better to not look at this selection in that way.”

Pakistan and Sri Lanka will also play three Twenty20 Internationals, two in Abu Dhabi (October 26 and 27) and the last one in Lahore on October 29, subject to security clearance.

Squad: Sarfraz Ahmed (captain, wk), Ahmed Shehzad, Fakhar Zaman, Mohammad Hafeez, Babar Azam, Shoaib Malik, Imad Wasim, Shadab Khan, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Mohammad Amir, Rumman Raees, Junaid Khan, Haris Sohail, Imam-ul-Haq.