Pakistan captain Salman Ali Agha won the toss and decided to bowl first against Zimbabwe in the T20 tri-series opener being played at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium on Tuesday.
Salman believed the Rawalpindi track didn’t look like a typical one and that dew will play a role later, as he explained his decision.
Fakhar Zaman returned to the Pakistan T20 side after being rested for their three-match series against South Africa earlier this month.
He replaces young batter Hasan Nawaz in the line-up after the latter was withdrawn from the squad following a string of failures across both white-ball formats lately.
A day earlier, Salman had said that Pakistan will stick to their strategy of relying on all-rounders rather than specialists in T20 cricket going into the tri-series.
The strategy, which has emerged as a blueprint of Pakistan’s white-ball head coach Mike Hesson since was appointed in May this year, has come under heavy criticism due to its nature of ignoring the importance of specialist batters and bowlers.
But for Salman, it is the go-to approach given what he believes is a “luxury” to have good enough all-rounders to deliver with both bat and ball.
“As you may have seen, we try to go for all-rounders mostly, and thankfully we have some who bowl and bat equally well,” he said in the pre-series press conference at the venue on Monday. “So we’ll try to carry on the same combination for the tri series.
“All of the all-rounders we have can bowl all four overs, and they bat really well too. So why would we not try to utilise them?
“Mohammad Nawaz and Faheem Ashraf are full bowlers and full batters. All top teams are doing that [relying on all-rounders]. We take [having that option] it as an opportunity.”
Teams:
PAKISTAN: Sahibzada Farhan (wicket-keeper), Saim Ayub, Babar Azam, Salman Ali Agha (captain), 5 Usman Khan (wicket-keeper), Fakhar Zaman, Mohammad Nawaz, Faheem Ashraf, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Salman Mirza, Abrar Ahmed
ZIMBABWE: Brian Bennett, Ryan Burl, Sikandar Raza (captain), Bradley Evans, Brendan Taylor (wicket-keeper), Tadiwanashe Marumani, Tashinga Musekiwa, Tony Munyonga, Graeme Cremer, Tinotenda Maposa, Richard Ngarava
