It has been 17 years since the English team has toured Pakistani shores. The first game of 3 at Rawalpindi should have been the one with excitement instead of nervousness. The English team were down with a huge virus just 24 hours before the game, with more than half their team laid low with the bug. The English had already named their XI more than 48 hours before the start of the test match.
The two teams have played each other a lot over the last few months, but that was in the white ball format. England, had tour Pakistan for a 7 match T20 series winning it 4-3. The two teams then met in the final of the ICC 2022 T20 World Cup final at MCG with England winning the title thanks to an amazing 50 by Ben Stokes.
Venue – Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, Rawalpindi
Time – 1030 AM IST
Likely pitch conditions – the team which wins the toss will want to bat first and make use of the helpful batting conditions early in the game. The weather early in the day will be cool with the nip in the air helping the seamers. The pitch could start to die down and become more spin friendly from the back end of the day 3 with 4th innings being tough to bat on. The average 1st innings score at this venue is 312 which shows that batting here can be tough.
Head to Head record –
Test played – 85
Wins for England – 25
Wins for Pakistan – 21
Matches drawn – 39
England XI –
Z. Crawley, B. Duckett, O.Pope, J. Root, H. Brook, B. Stokes, B. Foakes, L. Livingstone, O. Robinson, J. Leach and J. Anderson
Likely Pakistan XI –
Abdullah Shafique, I.U. Haq, A. Ali, B. Azam, S. Masood, M. Rizwan, M. Nawaz, N. Ali, M. Wasim Jr, H. Rauf and N. Shah
Rawalpindi Ground Stats –
Matches played – 12
Matches won by Pakistan – 5
Matches won by visiting team – 3
Drawn matches – 4
Games won after batting 1st – 2
Games won batting 2nd – 6
Games won after winning the toss – 6
Games won after losing the toss – 2
Highest individual score at the venue – 270 by Rahul Dravid vs Pakistan in 2004
Best bowling figures at this venue – 7/66 by Mohammad Zahid vs New Zealand in 1996
Highest team score – 600 by India vs Pakistan in 2004
Lowest team score – 139 by West Indies vs Pakistan in 1997
Average 1st innings score – 312
Average run rate – 3 runs per over
Approaching milestones –
·Mohammad Rizwan needs 3 runs to score 6000 first class runs
·Agha Salman needs 31 runs to reach 5000 runs in first class cricket
·Haris Rauf could become the 248th Test player for Pakistan if he makes his debut on Thursday
·Imam Ul Haq needs 27 runs to score 1000 runs in test cricket for Pakistan
·Liam Livingstone is set to be debutant number 708 for England in test cricket
·Ben Stokes is 8 wickets away getting 200 wickets in Test Cricket
·Ben Stokes will become the 16th Englishman to achieve this feat for England
·Ben Stokes with 192 wickets needs 1 wicket to go past Jim Laker (193) and Moeen Ali (195) to become the 16th most successful bowler for England
·James Anderson is 51 runs away from 2000 runs in First Class Cricket
·Ben Foakes needs 2 catches to complete 50 catches in Test Cricket
·Jack Lech needs 5 wickets to complete 100 wickets in Test Cricket
·Leach will become the 49th Englishman to achieve this feat
·Joe Root needs 3 wickets to complete 50 wickets in Test Cricket