MELBOURNE: Australia is set to tour Pakistan with a full-strength squad as no player has so far expressed any reservation about travelling to the country and selectors said they were “well down the track” to finalising a Test squad, according to a report by Cricket Australia on Tuesday.
The website quoted chief selector George Bailey as saying that he believed security plans to be “very, very robust and very, very thorough” after multiple briefings.
“I believe the boards are still working through some of the minor details around that tour, so once that gets the formal tick of approval then we’ll announce the squad post that, but we’re reasonably well down the track,” Bailey said.
It’s all positive as far as the Pakistan tour is concerned but uncertainty hovers over the resumption of the Sheffield Shield season, even though the selectors may not be required to see Shield performances for picking the squad after Australia’s 4-0 Ashes drubbing of England.
“Whether we need to see any Shield cricket or not, I’m not entirely sure what opportunity we will get,” Bailey said. However, he said, “One thing that I think we have to be really just okay with is that we’ve got to accept what we get at the moment and be flexible.”
“Whether it’s for Pakistan or not, you’d certainly hope that there is an opportunity for some Shield cricket at some stage just because of the competition and to continue to see guys improving and getting the opportunity to show their wares,” Bailey added.
Australia will tour Pakistan in March and April — the country’s first visit since 1998 — to play three Tests, three ODIs and one Twenty-20 international T20I match.
The Test matches will be played in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore from March 3 to 25 while all four white-ball matches will be played in Lahore form March 29 to April 5.
Last month, the chief executive of Cricket Australia (CA) had cleared the air over uncertainty surrounding the team’s tour of Pakistan, saying the bilateral series would go ahead as planned despite Covid-19 concerns.
