Pakistan captain Sahibzada Farhan hopes a new combination without star players Babar Azam and Shaheen Shah Afridi will come good against Sri Lanka in their Twenty20 International series starting in Rawalpindi on Friday.<\/p>\n
The three-match series will see Farhan take on the skipper’s role after leading a second-string side to silver at the Asian Games in Japan, losing to India in the final last week.<\/p>\n
Also missing from the squad are former T20I skipper Salman Agha and wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan, part of an exodus aimed at building the side for the 2028 T20I World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“I am confident that this new combination is the best and will settle in this series,” said Farhan on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“I know how to lead the side and I will not take pressure.”<\/p>\n
Azam’s form had dipped in T20Is, and he was also dropped from Pakistan’s final match against Sri Lanka at the Twenty20 World Cup in February.<\/p>\n
Shaheen is also out of favour for T20Is but will skipper Pakistan’s one-day international side in a tri-series with Sri Lanka and England starting in Rawalpindi from October 18.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka are also in a transition phase with star leg-spinner Wanindu Hasaranga and former skipper Charith Asalanka dropped for the tour.<\/p>\n
Hasaranga is joint-fifth in the all-time T20I wicket-taking list with 163 in 101 games.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, Wanindu is still injured, and we will miss him but we have a few other exciting players who I am sure will stand up and perform,” said Sri Lankan skipper Kusal Mendis.<\/p>\n
“I think everyone knows how to play in Pakistan,” said Mendis, who played in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) earlier this year.<\/p>\n
“Pakistan also have some new faces but their players are good and we know some of them from the PSL, so I hope our players will do well.”<\/p>\n
The remaining two matches are on October 11 and 13, also in Rawalpindi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pakistan captain Sahibzada Farhan hopes a new combination without star players Babar Azam and Shaheen Shah Afridi will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-796760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}