Umar Akmal dropped from the Test squad lined up to play against Sri Lanka
"Umar is a talented cricketer but he was not justifying his place in Test cricket," Pakistan's chief selector, Mohsin Khan, said after announcing the test cricket squad for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758.
Chief selector Mohsin Khan announced a 15-member cricket squad on Sunday night at the National Stadium Karachi during the break in the final National T20 Cup between http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sialkot-c842 Stallions and Rawalpindi Rams, for a three test match series against Sri Lanka to
be played at UAE later this month.
The cricket squad includes Muhammad Hafeez, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mohammad-Junaid-Khan-c77037.
“This is the best combination and I hope these players will give a tough time to the Sri Lankan Cricket team”, said http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mohsin-Hasan-Khan-c77595 during the press conference.
Standby players include: http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Yasir-Shah-c98252
While replying to a question about exclusion of Umar Akmal from the Test squad, the chief selector said, "Umar may be good in limited-over cricket but Tests and ODIs are contrasting games. In Tests, Umar is required to play long innings so we have advised
him to play domestic cricket and learn to bat for long”.
The 21 years old, right hand, middle order, aggressive batsman, Umar Akmal, best known for his green lipstick, has been dropped from the test series against Sri Lanka due to his poor performance in the previous test matches.
Umar has not scored a test century since 2009. He played 9 test matches in 2010 and scored only 365 runs averaging just 24.33 with the highest score 79 against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013 on 26 August 2010. Earlier this year, in the two test match series against New Zealand,
Umar was not included in the playing XI.
Upon given a chance again in May-June 2011 series against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760, Umar’s performance was hardly satisfactory. He scored only 166 runs in two test matches with the highest score of 56.
Despite that, Umar was included in the playing XI against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Zimbabwe-c3045 in an only test match in September 2011. Yet he was unable to perform in the 1st innings of the match and scored a bare minimum of 15 runs.
Umar Akmal made his test debut on 23 November 2009 against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Fawad-Alam-c56883, to score a century on a debut away from home.
Rounding up his test match career, Umar played 16 Tests, in 30 innings with an average of 35.82 and strike rate 65.98. He scored 1003 runs, with the highest score of 129. Umar made only one century and 6 half centuries in test cricket, took 12 catches, hit
17 sixes and 117 fours.
In his ODIs career, Umar played 45 ODIs, in 40 innings with an average of 37.79 and strike rate of 86.29. With the highest score of 102, he made a total of 1285 runs. Like test cricket, Umar made a century in ODIs too. He scored 8 half centuries, took 18
catches, hit 21 sixes and 100 fours.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755. He has the potential to stay at the crease and play long innings. He can even rotate the strike while playing. To boost his confidence, he needs to be given more opportunities by the PCB to play test
cricket.
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