England captain Ben Stokes has been ruled out of the first Test against Pakistan in Multan starting on Monday, and is in doubt for the second, with his recovery from a hamstring tear ahead of schedule but not yet complete.
“I tried my hardest to get myself fit for this first game, but I’ve taken the call to miss this one,” Stokes said. “I’ve not quite managed to get game ready. I’ve got a good 10 days to try and get myself ready for the second. Looking at the bigger picture around what we’ve got coming up and physically where I’m at with my rehab, I’m not quite ready to play.”
Stokes sustained the injury in August while playing for Northern Superchargers in the Hundred, and missed the Test series against Sri Lanka that completed England’s red-ball summer. Ollie Pope stood in as captain for that series and will continue in that role here.
With the second Test, also being played in Multan, starting in just 10 days Stokes has a fresh but looming target and is “not sure” that he will make it. “I’ve had to push myself incredibly hard, work really hard with the medical team, to get to where we are now,” he said. “I think I’m further ahead than what we expected today, and I’ll be working just as hard over the next 10 days to try and give myself a chance of being fit for the second Test.”
England have named their team for the first game of the three they have scheduled in Pakistan, with Brydon Carse making his Test debut against the same opponents he faced in his first international appearance, an ODI in Cardiff in 2021.
Joe Root said: “He’s a wicket-taker. You’ve seen it in white-ball cricket, you’ve seen it for Durham. He’s got those balls in him that out of nowhere, on the flattest of wickets, can make something happen.
“That’s really exciting, when you’ve got someone like that within your squad that can potentially turn the game in a matter of moments, and he can bat as well. I think he offers a huge amount to the squad.”
In Stokes’s absence the return of Zak Crawley is the only change to the top seven that played the final Test of the summer at the Oval. Chris Woakes will bat at No 7 in his first away Test since the final series of Root’s captaincy, against West Indies in March 2022, and his first in Asia since December 2016.
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Jack Leach returns for what will be the seventh away Test in his last eight. Leach has failed to finish his last two Tests, having injured a knee in Hyderabad at the start of this year and suffered what were described as “low back symptoms”, revealed after scans to be a lumbar stress fracture, against Ireland at Lord’s last June. His Somerset teammate Shoaib Bashir was preferred to him across this summer, but both will play here.
England team: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jamie Smith, Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse, Jack Leach, Shoaib Bashir.
