CAPE TOWN: Pakistan’s captain Shan Masood on Thursday, shared that they are yet to finalise the lineup for the final Test of the two-match series against South Africa, scheduled to commence on Friday here at the Newlands.
Masood, while addressing the media here on the eve of the second Test, revealed that the final decision regarding the playing XI will be made after analyzing the pitch again.
“Not yet. I’d like to have one final look at the pitch,” said Masood.
“Looks a bit different, less grass covering but, I think South Africa have had the luxury of having the training session earlier than us so, we’d like to take our time and see what the best possible XI is,” he added.
On the other hand, the home side have already unveiled their playing XI for the upcoming fixture, which marked the return of Keshav Maharaj and Wiaan Mulder, while young pacer Kwena Maphaka will be making his debut.
When probed about if South Africa’s playing XI can influence Pakistan’s decision-making, Masood argued that the home side have the luxury of having a number of all-rounders in their squad.
“They still have four seamers playing. They have the luxury of quite a lot of all-rounders in the squad – Mulder, Jansen and Bosch – so they can afford to sort of making those decisions,” said Masood.
“I think for us, it’ll be slightly trickier. We still feel that pace will have a lot of role to play in these conditions even if it’s not the usual pitch. You can’t decide on the pitch unless the two teams have batted on it.
“So, do we need a specialist or we can go with the same XI […] it was kind of that pattern which was successful for us when Agha bowled really well in Australia and take that forward with us so, we’ll have to see and will probably make a decision in the evening.”
Shan Masood also acknowledged underutilizing fast-bowling all-rounder Aamir Jamal in the series opener in Centurion, where he bowled only one over in the second innings and went for 11 runs, which put the home side just one hit away from sealing the high-stakes victory.
Masood described the move as a ‘gamble’ to lure Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen to try something different before expressing his hope for the all-rounder to bowl more in the subsequent fixture.
“I think, with Aamir, the case is that he links the team together, he’s a very important player in the Test team going forward that number eight position where you can bat as a very decent batsman and bowl like a proper fast bowler.
“Unfortunately, the situation of the match was as such that apart from his first spell, he didn’t really have a go and he was brought in at a time when we just took a gamble and to forced Rabada and Jansen to do something else. That was the reason behind that but we hope that he’ll bowl more on this surface.”
For the unversed, Pakistan narrowly lost the first Test by just wickets despite reducing South Africa to 99/8 while defending 148 as an unbeaten partnership between Rabada and Jansen took the home side over the line.
Faizan Lakhani Faizan Lakhani is Deputy Editor (Sports) at Geo News.
