Pakistan recalled former skipper Babar Azam on Wednesday for the away Test series and white-ball matches against South Africa starting next week, but there was no place for spinner Sajid Khan.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old star batsman was dropped following defeat in the first Test against England in October and rested for the ongoing limited-over series against Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
Pakistan will play three T20 Internationals in South Africa starting from December 10, followed by three one-day matches and two Tests. Fast bowler Mohammad Abbas also returns to the Test side after last playing in 2021.<\/p>\n
Off-spinner Sajid misses out despite taking 19 wickets in the 2-1 home Test series win over England, with selectors taking into consideration the less spin-friendly pitches in South Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have adopted horses for courses policy to ensure squads are well-balanced and leaving out Sajid was an extremely difficult decision,\u201d Aaqib Javed, a senior member of the selection committee, said in a Pakistan Cricket Board statement.<\/p>\n
Sajid\u2019s spin partner Noman Ali, who took 20 wickets against England, is the only spinner for the Tests in Centurion and Cape Town. The first Test starts on December 26.<\/p>\n
Javed said fast bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi has been picked only for the white-ball matches to manage his workload.<\/p>\n
Opener Fakhar Zaman is still out because he has yet to regain form and match fitness, said Javed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan recalled former skipper Babar Azam on Wednesday for the away Test series and white-ball matches against South Africa starting next week, but there was no place for spinner Sajid Khan. The 30-year-old star batsman was dropped following defeat in the first Test against England in October and rested for the ongoing limited-over series against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3533,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions\/3533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}