{"id":509998,"date":"2026-02-28T16:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/509998\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T16:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:13:08","slug":"sri-lanka-make-two-changes-and-bowl-pakistan-drop-babar-and-ayub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/509998\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka make two changes and bowl; Pakistan drop Babar and Ayub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Toss Sri Lanka chose to bowl vs Pakistan<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/team\/sri-lanka-8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sri Lanka<\/a> captain Dasun Shanaka won the toss and opted to bowl against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/team\/pakistan-7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pakistan<\/a> in Pallekele. Sri Lanka are out of the race for the semi-finals but Pakistan can make it provided they win by about 64 runs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We would have bowled first definitely,&#8221; Pakistan captain Salman Agha said. &#8220;There&#8217;s no way we can do that while batting first. But now we need to put up a good total and restrict them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a massive opportunity. We just need to play a perfect game. We have to bat well, bowl well and field well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pakistan made three changes. They left out Babar Azam, Saim Ayub and Salman Mirza and brought in Khawaja Nafay, Naseem Shah and Abrar Ahmed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a good pitch and there could be dew later on,&#8221; Shanaka said. &#8220;We need to do our basics right. We didn&#8217;t do that in the last two games but we need to make it right here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka made two changes. They brought in Kamil Mishara for the injured Kusal Mendis, and Janith Liyanage came in for Dushan Hemantha.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka: 1 Pathum Nissanka, 2 Kamil Mishara (wk), 3 Charith Asalanka, 4 Pavan Rathnayake, 5 Kamindu Mendis, 6 Dasun Shanaka (capt), 7 Janith Liyanage, 8 Dunith Wellalage, 9 Dushmantha Chameera, 10 Maheesh Theekshana, 11 Dilshan Madushanka<\/p>\n<p>Pakistan: 1 Sahibzada Farhan, 2 Fakhar Zaman, 3 Salman Agha (capt), 4 Khawaja Nafay, 5 Usman Khan (wk), 6 Shadab Khan, 7 Mohammad Nawaz, 8 Shaheen Shah Afridi, 9 Naseem Shah, 10 Abrar Ahmed, 11 Usman Tariq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toss Sri Lanka chose to bowl vs Pakistan Sri Lanka captain Dasun Shanaka won the toss and opted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-509998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}