CHENNAI, India (AP) — Pakistan captain Babar Azam won the toss and chose to bat first against spin-heavy Afghanistan at the Cricket World Cup on Monday.
Afghanistan is languishing at the bottom of the points table. It has two points from four games after it stunned defending champion England by 69 runs.
Afghanistan went with four spinners in the hope that the dry pitch will help slow bowlers. It gave spinner Noor Ahmed his first game in the tournament.
Ahmed replaced Fazalhaq Farooqi and will be challenging Pakistan with Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohammad Nabi as the other spin options.
Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi also wanted to bat first, but said the “toss is not in our hand and you have to play good cricket.”
Pakistan, which has four points from its two victories against Netherlands and Sri Lanka, is looking to put its campaign back on track after suffering successive losses against archrival India and Australia.
Pakistan brought back its out-of-form vice captain Shadab Khan after left-arm spinner Mohammad Nawaz had to sit out the game because of fever.
Afghanistan returns to the same venue where it lost by 149 runs to New Zealand in its last game when it got bowled out for 139 with more than 15 overs to spare.
Pakistan's bowlers and batters — except for Mohammad Rizwan — are yet to fire against big teams in the tournament.
Babar has scored just one half century against India and was out for 10 when Pakistan chased down the World Cup record of 345 against Sri Lanka at Hyderabad.
Opening batter Fakhar Zaman missed his fourth successive match with the left-handed opener needing more time to recover from a knee injury.
Babar said he hopes the batters will put enough runs on board for his bowlers to defend under lights.
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Pakistan: Abdullah Shafique, Imam-ul-Haq, Babar Azam (captain), Mohammad Rizwan, Saud Shakeel, Iftikhar Ahmed, Shadab Khan, Usama Mir, Shaheen Afridi, Hasan Ali, Haris Rauf.
Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi (captain), Azmatullah Omarzai, Ikram Alikhil, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Noor Ahmed, Naveen-ul-Haq.
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AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket
