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Pakistan recall Hasan Ali for New Zealand Tests, Shaheen still out
Uncapped Kamran Ghulam has been called up to replace Azhar Ali, who retired after Pakistan's last Test
Pakistan have recalled fast bowler Hasan Ali and picked uncapped middle-order batter Kamran Ghulam for the upcoming two-match Test series against New Zealand at home. Shaheen Shah Afridi continues to miss out as he recovers from a knee injury he picked up in the 2022 T20 World Cup final.
Naseem Shah, who missed the last two Tests against England with a shoulder injury, has also returned to the squad after being declared fit. But Haris Rauf, who had also picked up an injury on debut in the first Test against England and did not play in the next two matches, is still recovering, and has been left out.
Ghulam, 27, had also been picked for the Bangladesh Test series a year ago but didn't get a game then. He has played 44 first-class matches and averages 47.36, having struck 10 centuries and 18 half-centuries for his 3268 runs. He replaces Azhar Ali in the squad after the senior batter's retirement. Ghulam had scored a record 1249 runs for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the 2020-21 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy and was part of the victorious side in the same tournament last season. He is in fine form these days as well, having scored 92, 0, 123* and 98* in the one-day format in the Pakistan Cup this month. In the QeA Trophy before that, he scored 597 runs from 14 innings to average 42.64.
Hasan returns to the squad after being dropped for the series against England, which the visitors swept 3-0. His last Test was against Sri Lanka in Galle in July.
Fast bowler Mohammad Ali and bowling allrounder Faheem Ashraf, who were in the squad for the England Tests, have both been excluded for the upcoming series and advised to participate in the ongoing Pakistan Cup, the PCB said in its statement.
The series will start on December 26 in Karachi and then move to Multan for the second game starting January 3. That will be followed by three day-night ODIs back in Karachi from January 10 to 14.
Pakistan squad: Babar Azam (capt), Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Agha Salman, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Kamran Ghulam, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Wasim, Naseem Shah, Nauman Ali, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Saud Shakeel, Shan Masood and Zahid Mehmood
Anderson vs Rizwan, Messi vs Netherlands: two acts of grand-wizard magic
Ten days ago, two old masters added a special vignette apiece to their career highlights reels
This pass came first in Doha, the ball a day later in Multan. If you're into both sports, you probably don't need the geographic locators to figure the ball in question was delivered by James Anderson and the pass by Lionel Messi, or that, yes, they have nothing in common and yet it's impossible to dissociate the two; sat next to each other like strangers on a train, but on the same journey.
At least I've found it impossible to not think of them together, the main reason being the slightly absurd geometry of both acts - aesthetically fulfilling geometry being the absolute bedrock of sport. On the surface, Anderson's ball to Mohammad Rizwan doesn't look as showy as other balls that day that dismissed Babar Azam, or Abdullah Shafique. Those were out, loud and proud bits of reverse, breaking back big enough to get the protractors out.
The Anderson ball was subtler, far more ambiguous in intent, in what it did and how, and even now, slowed down, digested multiple times since, you're really just guessing. Rizwan said it was like being bowled by a Dukes ball in England: upright seam on release like with a new ball, which, at 16 overs old, it could have been. Except this was dry, dusty Multan.
In flight it teased old-ball reverse, swinging in towards the shiny side. And when it landed, it behaved like it had done so on a still-proud seam and broke away from the path it had teased. Anderson said it hit a crack, but honestly, given the conditions for fast bowling, it's more like it hit a glitch in the matrix. Rizwan left no gap between bat and pad, there was barely a glimmer of his off stump as bat came down and still it nailed the top of off. Like pitching Better Call Saul as merely the prequel to Breaking Bad, hitting the top of off has never more grossly undersold the possibilities of a ball like this that hits the top of off.
Similarly, a pass (no), an assist (no), a through ball (still no), none of it begins to capture what Messi did in the quarter-final against Netherlands. There was the universe as it was and then, in the 35th minute God said, let there be light, and then, unto Nahuel Molina did this message drop like a bomb.
Anderson said the ball to Rizwan hit a crack, but honestly, given the conditions, it's more like it hit a glitch in the matrix
As Messi cut in from the right, scuttling diagonally towards the box, options looked limited. The Dutch defence, well drilled, had formed two compact lines of three, harrying away in front of him. The possible-is-still-something option was Marcos Acuna, the left-back, who was in space to his left. Ahead of Messi were Julian Alvarez and Molina. Both had defenders tight enough to them to warrant passes unlikely.
He bluffed an early pass to Molina, running ahead to Messi's right straight into the box. That drew some pace out of Nathan Ake, the defender hitherto in Messi's face cutting down his vision and ambition like a big business acquisition of a start-up. It also bought Messi some breathing room.
An opinion: through balls are hands down one of the best things about football, the absolute zenith of its geometric possibilities. The greatest ones hit you like plot twists, the ending you hadn't seen coming - Andres Iniesta here or Xavi here. In most cases the passer has the luxury of the full view of play ahead of them - the pass is played having first been seen exactly where it needs to be played to.
Here, the angle of Messi's run meant he had cut off play over his right shoulder and that Molina's run was taking place outside his line of vision. If you slow the close-in angle from front-on right down maybe you see Messi's eyes dart to the right a couple of times as he's running. Maybe. He's definitely not turning his head to look and Ake is mostly obstructing that view. More, it's just Messi's sense that Molina is exactly where he should be, where he needs him to be, where he wants him to be. And then, having gained a bit on Ake, he flips the switch: a no-look through ball that totally reverses the direction of play, perfectly weighted, and which, at a stroke, has unemployed eight defenders (including the goalkeeper). Molina doesn't have to break stride or sweat, or even really think, to do what he does. The finish is cute but it's literally putting in the full stop at the end of a novel. This isn't a plot twist, it's the next great film you haven't yet seen.
Somehow, the most ordinary thing about it is the most extraordinary thing that most footballers can hope to do - the nutmegging of Ake for the pass itself.
Nobody saw that pass coming, like nobody saw the Anderson ball coming. It was all going this way until it was going completely the other way. A glitch in the matrix? A twitch of genius more like. There wasn't another ball like Anderson's all series, as there wasn't another pass like Messi's. Several years removed from now, some of us are going to be saying there's not been a whole lot like either before or after. These weren't possibilities we didn't know existed being created, these were entire realities being created in which this was the only possibility that could exist, a reality created by years of their lived, unique experience. And ultimately, they elevated everything around them, even (in time to come) bestowing a kind of honour upon the defeated. If it took that to beat them…
The other thing is the finality of it all. There are not going to be that many more times we're going to see Anderson and Messi. Messi probably won't play another World Cup, and next summer, an Ashes win at home might be the moment Anderson wakes up and decides that bowling 20 overs is not the funnest way to spend a day, that there is nothing left in the prospect of delivering those 20 overs to drive him. They grow older, grizzlier, yes, but also frailer, and all those things they could do in their sleep once are things that now put them to sleep from the exertion.
It has been grand watching them in this late stage. Anderson, Grumpy Ole Anderson, has bowled as if unburdened by mood, an old dog delighting in old tricks; Messi, meanwhile, has been a salty delight, like he's just learnt at the age of 35 that it's fun to troll human beings. The impending sense that it's all about to end has, of course, heightened these moments, making them feel even more exquisite and fragile and in need of cherishing. Sure, that also distorts them. There are other passes, other goals Messi has scored (his assist in the very next game, for one) other wickets Anderson has taken that, it could be argued, have been better.
That's fine, entirely reasonable.
But that ball, this pass, was never only the geometry each traced in those instants. It was that in them were manifest all those moments that form our memories of everything the pair have done, a history of the geometry they have produced as well, inevitably, as the geometry of their history. The wild parabolas Anderson's swing cut earlier, the mazy slices through half a side that felt like Messi's homage to Maradona but were actually all him; the subtler, nibbling Anderson bits, a seam canted like so, a finger left like that, a little wobble, the cute, curved Messi finishes from the edge of the box into a far corner somewhere; the hairstyles (Messi's had more fun with it than you might think at first); all blending together on this one long arc, each moment to the next to the next to the next to now, bowing to its end.
Jofra Archer returns to England's ODI squad for tour of South Africa
Fast bowler set to play first international since March 2021, following elbow and back injuries
Jofra Archer looks set to play his first match for England in almost two years, after being named in a 14-man ODI squad for the tour of South Africa in January.
Archer, England's leading wicket-taker in their 2019 ODI World Cup victory, last played an international game in March 2021, on England's T20I tour of India.
His career in recent years has been plagued by a long-standing elbow issue, which has required two bouts of surgery, as well as a stress fracture of the lower back which ruled him out of the entire 2022 home summer.
However, he made an encouraging return to the England set-up in the UAE last month, training with the England Lions and taking part in the warm-up match against the Test squad, in which he hit Zak Crawley on the head with a sharp bouncer in the first of his nine overs.
His return forms part of a managed return to action across formats, with Archer also due to play two matches for MI Cape Town in the inaugural SA20 - the new South Africa domestic competition that gets underway in January, ahead of the three-match England tour.
Speaking after his bowling stint in Abu Dhabi last month, Archer described his return to action against the Test squad as "a small day but still a big day", and admitted he was still in very early stages of his return to full fitness.
"I'd rather take these last few months very seriously, more serious than probably all of the rehab," he said. "Because once this phase goes right, then it can set me up for the next three to four years injury-free. That's the goal right now."
The tour will also offer Harry Brook a chance to complete his full set of England caps. He has been named in an ODI squad for the first time, following his formidable run of form in the recent Test series in Pakistan, where he made 468 runs at 93.60, including three hundreds.
Ben Duckett, who also impressed on both white- and red-ball legs of the tour of Pakistan, making 357 runs at 71.40 in the latter, is back in the ODI set-up for the first time since 2016. Meanwhile, Reece Topley is said to be making an "excellent recovery" from the freak ankle injury he suffered after tripping on a boundary marker in the lead-up to England's successful T20 World Cup campaign in Australia last month, and has also been named in the squad.
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However, Liam Livingstone, who suffered a knee injury during England's first Test win over Pakistan in Rawalpindi earlier this month, has been overlooked while he continues his recovery. There is no place either for Surrey's Will Jacks, who made his Test debut in the same match and claimed six first-innings wickets, nor for James Vince and Sam Billings, both of whom played in England's most recent ODI series against Australia in November.
Joe Root was also omitted, ahead of the news of his signing for the Dubai Capitals in the International League T20.
The three-match series will be played over six days, with the first match in Bloemfontein starting on January 27, while England's Test tour of New Zealand gets underway the following week.
England ODI squad: Jos Buttler (capt), Moeen Ali, Jofra Archer, Harry Brook, Sam Curran, Ben Duckett, Dawid Malan, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, Phil Salt, Olly Stone, Reece Topley, David Willey, Chris Woakes.
Sydney Sixers survive Asif Ali's blitz to seal opening win
Pakistan batter smashes 41 off 13 balls to give Sixers a late scare
Sydney Sixers 137 for 6 (Philippe 43, Dooley 2-19, Shadab 2-32) beat Hobart Hurricanes 131 for 7 (Asif 41, Abbott 2-32) by six runs via DLS method
Sydney Sixers survived a late onslaught from Asif Ali to thwart Hobart Hurricanes on a slow SCG surface and register their first victory of this BBL season.
Rain delayed the start by an hour and reduced the match to 14 overs per side. There were some eyebrows raised when Sixers captain Moises Henriques elected to bat but it proved a masterstroke.
Defending 138, Sixers' bowlers relished returning to their favoured SCG as they stymied Hurricanes, who were never really in the hunt until Asif's astonishing 41 off 13 balls almost snatched a remarkable late victory.
Asif nearly conjures a miracle
Hurricanes were dead and buried, needing 45 off 10 deliveries until Asif had other ideas. He proceeded to smash 22 runs off Hayden Kerr's next four deliveries, with the last being a six off a full toss around waist height that should have been called a no-ball.
Needing 23 off the final over, Hurricanes' chances increased considerably when quick Naveen-ul-Haq bowled a wide on the first delivery and then he was smashed for a boundary by a red-hot Asif.
Sixers' players looked ashen-faced as their stunned fans sensed a massive meltdown. But Asif holed out on the next delivery to finally snuff out Hurricanes' chances.
O'Keefe relishes slow surface
Left-arm spinner Steve O'Keefe turned 38 earlier in the month, but he hasn't lost his ability to frustrate batters. On an increasingly slow surface, O'Keefe proved a vital inclusion, having been omitted against Scorchers at the pace-friendly Optus Stadium.
With canny bowling, O'Keefe put the brakes on Hurricanes' high-octane top-order batters. He snared the key wicket of Ben McDermott in the fourth over and then returned in the eighth over at a crucial juncture.
Hurricanes' run rate had lifted to 12 an over as captain Matthew Wade eyed putting the foot down. But he was unable to break the shackles from O'Keefe, who bowled nine dot balls in his first 11 deliveries.
A frustrated Wade holed out in the next over to spinner Todd Murphy and then kicked his bat as he trudged off in disgust.
Mixed bag for Sixers' batting line-up
Sixers were keen to make amends after sloppy batting displays in losses to Strikers and Scorchers.
After a topsy-turvy batting effort against Hurricanes, Sixers still have not had a batter score a half-century this season although they reached a competitive total due to strong bookends.
Openers Josh Philippe and Kurtis Patterson finally fired with a 68-run opening partnership to get Sixers off to a flier. Patterson, who holds a Test average of 144 from two matches, was a revelation last season as an aggressive opener for champions Scorchers.
After returning home to Sydney, Patterson made his first impact this season with a 25-ball 38 to lay a strong platform with Philippe. But their good work was undone after a collapse of 5 for 16 before Kerr hit an invaluable 32 from 20 balls at the death.
Kerr, who made 42 against Scorchers, continues to make a compelling case to move up the order.
Shadab makes amends after dropping a sitter
Hurricanes were thrashed early with Wade using five different bowlers in as many overs in a desperate bid for a breakthrough.
Their early woes were symbolised when spinner Shadab Khan dropped the simplest of return catches in the fifth over to reprieve Philippe.
The wet ball may have given him an excuse for fumbling the skier but Shadab was keen to make amends.
Shadab did exactly that when he came back in the eighth over and removed Philippe with a slow and wide delivery that was hit straight to long-off. It was gutsy bowling from Shadab, who was suddenly on a roll when he dismissed Henriques first ball with a spectacular diving return catch.
It was reminiscent of his brilliant caught and bowled dismissal of Scorchers allrounder Aaron Hardie earlier in the week.
Shadab's efforts sparked a Sixers collapse with left-arm spinner Paddy Dooley, whose unorthodox bowling action has turned heads, continuing his breakout season with the wickets of Jordan Silk and Dan Christian.
55.479 SRY