Lahore
\nNext year\u2019s World Cup is in sight as a new-look Pakistan under Mike Hesson host a young Bangladesh team in Lahore in three Twenty20 internationals from Wednesday.
\nThe 2009 world champions Pakistan have endured a significant downturn in the last 12 months and crashed out in the first round of the World Cup in 2024.
\nThey have won only three of their last 13 T20Is, two against minnows Zimbabwe, and slumped to eighth in the T20I rankings.
\nWith a new head coach in New Zealand\u2019s Hesson they are looking to younger players with the World Cup in India and Sri Lanka just eight months away.
\nStar batsmen Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan, and pace spearhead Shaheen Shah Afridi, have all been axed.
\nSalman Agha will lead the side, having lost a series in New Zealand 4-1 two months ago.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been really clear around the style of play we want and then it\u2019s about picking players that can do that,\u201d Hesson, who coached New Zealand from 2012-2018, said.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got a good number of T20Is between now and the World Cup.
\n\u201cWe will develop a depth of squad playing the way we want and the rankings will come in time because it is about the way we want to play.\u201d
\nBangladesh, ranked ninth, are in the same boat.
\nThey have won just four of their last 12 T20Is and lost series against lower-ranked United States (2024) and United Arab Emirates earlier this month.
\nThey also have a new coach in West Indian Phil Simmons, who will be missing senior players including Tamim Iqbal, Shakib Al Hasan, Mohammad Mahmudullah and Mushfiqur Rahim, all either fully retired or from the T20Is.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re aiming to improve our cricket by performing well in this series,\u201d said Simmons, who took over in October.
\nFrontline fast bowlers Taskin Ahmed and Mustafizur Rahman are nursing injuries while new pace sensation Nahid Rana withdrew from the tour over security fears following the cross-border conflict between India and Pakistan.
\nThe conflict put the tour in doubt but Bangladesh finally agreed to play three T20Is instead of the scheduled five.
\nThe remaining matches are on Friday and Sunday, also in Lahore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lahore Next year\u2019s World Cup is in sight as a new-look Pakistan under Mike Hesson host a young Bangladesh team in Lahore in three Twenty20 internationals from Wednesday. The 2009 world champions Pakistan have endured a significant downturn in the last 12 months and crashed out in the first round of the World Cup in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":81652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81655,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81642\/revisions\/81655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}