ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will open their first Test series against Australia at home in 24 years on Friday in Rawalpindi, under heightened security and with the visitors on unfamiliar territory.
AFP Sports examines three players from each side to keep an eye on as the long-awaited and possibly thrilling three-test series develops.
When Steve Smith played against Pakistan at Lord’s in 2010, he started out as a leg-spinner all-rounder before becoming one of the best batsmen in the world.
His average of 59.87 is better than any other Test batsman in the world right now, and he has shown that he can play on slow, turning wickets in the subcontinent.
Australia will rely on Smith, who had a bad series against England with 244 runs at 30.50 and a best score of 93. Smith will lead the batting against a powerful Pakistan attack on unfamiliar pitches.
Mathan and Lyon were expected to play a big role in winning games on Pakistan’s slow and twisting pitches.
As a slow bowler, Lyon only has more wickets for Australia than Shane Warne, the leg-spinner. Lyon has 415 Test wickets for Australia.
During his time as a curator, Lyon was able to see how the ground changed over the course of a five-day match. Lyon has taken 95 wickets in 19 Tests in Asia.
Marnus Labuschagne is the world’s top-ranked batsman and he was catapulted to popularity after he batted fifty in place of Steve Smith during the 2019 Ashes Test at Lord’s.
In 23 Tests, he scored 2,220 runs at a strike rate of 56.92 with six hundreds.
Labuschagne’s maverick batting style places him squarely in the company of teammate Smith, who now holds the record for the highest Test average.
The few weeks he spent training at home on a makeshift mat with aluminium strips attached to it, he tried to get a sense of what he would be facing when he faced Pakistan’s spinners.
Shehnaz Shah Afridi has made a huge leap since he made his Test debut three years ago when he was 18 years old.
He has a vicious inswinger to right-handers that blew arch-rivals India away during last year’s T20 World Cup.
Shaheen also has a good record with the red ball. In Tests last year, he took 47 wickets, which was second only to Ravi Ashwin’s 54 wickets for India.
In 2021, he won the ICC Player of the Year title with 78 wickets in all international cricket.
When Pakistan’s captain, Babar Azam, does one of his amazing cover drives, the whole stadium is said to stop.
In each of the three forms of baseball, batting, and softball, he’s been in the top 10 for a long time.
He is the best player in 50-over and Twenty20 cricket, and now he wants to be the best player in Tests, too. In eight Tests last year, he scored 416 points without hitting a hundred, and he wants to do the same this year.
Australia will be mindful, though, that his most recent Test century came against Bangladesh at this week’s venue in Rawalpindi.
Sajid Khan has taken over off-spinning responsibilities from Bilal Asif, who was the match-winner for Pakistan against Australia in the 2018 UAE series.
If a batter doesn’t like it when Sajid bowls from the wrong foot, he can show that by taking 12 wickets for Pakistan against Bangladesh last December.
As with other off-spinners, he prefers to operate outside the left-off-stump, which might offer difficulties for Australia’s left-handed quintet of David Warner, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, and Alex Carey.
