England vs Pakistan, 1st Test: 506/4 – Yet to bat (England chose to bat)
England had first visited Pakistan 17 years before. It was because of Pakistan’s security situation that most cricket teams refused to go to Pakistan for cricket. After the incident with the Sri Lankan cricket team, things were going in the wrong direction for Pakistan. However, the security situation has improved to a great extent, and more teams are touring Pakistan for Cricket. Although this isn’t their first game of cricket, Pakistan also toured England and played a couple of T20 Matches along with ODIs and Test matches.
This time England has come to Pakistan, especially for test cricket. They aim to bring the newer players forward and make sure the bowlers perform well on tough pitch conditions in Pakistan. The players were excited to play, however, tragedy struck them. News started to spread from the English team side that most of the players were suffering from an illness and the series would eventually be canceled. Most people were of the fact that they had suffered from food poisoning as they can these types of concerns before. Moving on, to address those concerns, they also preferred to hire their cooking staff to ensure their players remain in the best of health to play a great game of cricket. In addition to the previous, the English cricket board came up and clarified the issue.
England vs Pakistan 1st Test Match in Pakistan, Starts Despite Illness Among Players
The spokesperson from the English Cricket board said that it was not food poising that was affecting the players. Rather, it was a virus spread amongst the cricket players. Additionally, they further clarified that the illness was supposedly due to a bug or a virus but not the coronavirus. If it was the coronavirus, the England cricket team would have to be quarantined first and then allowed to play depending on the test results. Their medical team said that the cricket players caught the virus along their journey to Pakistan. The total number of players affected by the virus was more than 12, and it included the captain of the English cricket team Ben Stokes.
Due to the situation, the English and Pakistan cricket board had no choice but to delay the series for a day or two. Later on, it was decided that the decision to delay the series would be decided on Thursday morning. Today on Thursday morning, the English cricket board and the Pakistan cricket board decided that the match will start today morning at 10 Am. It was delightful news for Pakistani fans. The audience from south Asia has always been very excited about cricket. It accumulated crickets fans from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
Moreover, due to the illness among the English cricket players, it was expected that they would have to do drastic changes in their starting eleven, but that was not the case. Players started to recover quickly and were in good shape to play the game. However, they were compelled to replace the all-rounder Will Jacks with Ben Foakes. This test match would be the first-ever international test match for both Ben Foakes and Livingstone. On the Pakistani side, they focused more on giving the newer players a chance. Zahid Mehmood, Saud Shakeel, Haris Rauf, and Muhammad Ali would be playing their first-ever test match today.
As of now, that test match has started, and both sides are excited to play after a very long time on entirely different pitch conditions. This morning, England won the toss and elected to bat first. The pitch seemed very hard, giving an advantage to the batsmen. The bowlers will have to think outside the box to land some wickets.
