Opening batter Zak Crawley and left-arm spinner Jack Leach are expected to return for England’s upcoming Test series against Pakistan, which is scheduled to run from October 7 to 24 with matches in Multan, Karachi, and Rawalpindi.
Jack Leach, who has been out of the England Test squad since 2018, is hopeful for a long-awaited comeback, thanks to his impressive performances in the County Championship.
Although a key player under Ben Stokes’ captaincy, a series of injuries kept Leach off the international stage. Leach remains optimistic about being selected, acknowledging the competition from promising young spinner Shoaib Bashir, who has already taken three five-wicket hauls in just eight Test matches.
Zak Crawley, who has been sidelined since the final Test against West Indies due to a fractured finger, is in a race against time to recover. With the typical recovery period being six to eight weeks, Crawley has just enough time to be fit for the Pakistan series, which was nine weeks away when he sustained the injury.
In related cricket news, Gus Atkinson recently scored his maiden first-class century in a Test match, becoming the 46th player to achieve this milestone. Atkinson’s accomplished 118 at Lord’s made him the sixth player to score a century and take ten wickets in a match at the historic ground. This feat places him in elite company alongside only five others who have managed to score a century and take ten wickets in a Lord’s Test.
Another interesting statistic involves the double stumping of Saud Shakeel during Pakistan’s defeat by Bangladesh in Rawalpindi, marking the 24th time this has happened in a Test match.
Shakeel became the first Pakistan player to experience this, following in the footsteps of Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza, who was stumped twice in a match against Sri Lanka in 2019-20.
Regarding Brian Lara’s historic quadruple-century, England’s offspinner Gareth Batty conceded 130 runs to Lara during that innings, placing him third on the list of most runs conceded by a bowler to a single batter in a Test innings.
Lastly, Joe Root recently scored his seventh Test century at Lord’s, surpassing the previous record held by Graham Gooch and Michael Vaughan, who each had six. This places Root in the record books for the most Test centuries at Lord’s.
