Who is Pakistan’s backup opener and wicket-keeper for the World Cup 2019

The exclusion of Abid Ali from the final squad for the World Cup has raised a lot of questions on the availability of a backup wicket-keeper and an opener. 

Remember, this time around a round-robin format will be followed in the World Cup which means that each team will have to face all other teams participating in the tournament at least one time.

Pakistani team will have to play at least 9 matches in the World Cup and they have already played 10 matches in the UK recently including a bilateral series against England, warm-up matches and practice matches.

Let’s suppose that if any of the two openers get injured after the second match and the injury is a minor one, that the opener will get 100% fit within a week. This means that he will have to miss two matches but will be available for the next five matches. Here in this scenario, the management would obviously want that opener for the remaining five matches which would refrain them from announcing his replacement.

This means that the team will have to ask Mohammad Hafeez to open the innings who has been the regular opener for Pakistan Cricket team previously but he has not opened the innings in the past few years, especially after the introduction of new rules of using two new balls in One-day internationals. It would be a huge risk to experiment with Hafeez in the event like the World Cup.

For backup wicket-keeper, Ramiz Raja has already spoken about Sarfaraz’s fitness and he has expressed concern as well. Sarfaraz himself has also mentioned it that he cannot bat at 4 after keeping the wickets for 50 overs because he has some issues with his back.

Keeping the aforementioned issue in mind, the Pakistani cricket team might have to pay a huge cost in terms of results of the matches. These little things might prove to be a huge factor in producing a negative impact during Pakistan’s World Cup campaign.