Pakistan won toss, choose to field first against England

Pakistan has won the toss and chose to field first in the second ODI match against England being played at Lord’s Cricket Ground, London, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

England 1 Phil Salt, 2 Dawid Malan, 3 Zak Crawley, 4 James Vince, 5 Ben Stokes (capt), 6 John Simpson (wkt), 7 Lewis Gregory, 8 Craig Overton, 9 Brydon Carse, 10 Saqib Mahmood, 11 Matt Parkinson.

Pakistan 1 Fakhar Zaman, 2 Imam-ul-Haq, 3 Babar Azam (capt), 4 Mohammad Rizwan (wkt), 5 Saud Shakeel, 6 Sohaib Maqsood, 7 Shadab Khan, 8 Faheem Ashraf, 9 Hasan Ali, 10 Shaheen Shah Afridi, 11 Haris Rauf.

Pakistan's team is desperate to win this second ODI to remain in the series. A comfortable win would see Pakistan leapfrog Australia and Bangladesh (on net run-rate) to go second in the World Cup Super League table.

As per the previous record, Pakistan have won four of their last five ODIs at Lord's, including victories against South Africa and Bangladesh in the 2019 World Cup. They will have a returning home crowd to contend with - an English cricket ground will be at 100 percent capacity for the first time since 2019 - but a significant proportion will be made up of the Pakistani diaspora from around the UK.

Saturday's forecast is not ideal, with dark clouds and persistent rain due throughout the morning, but the suggestion is that it should clear up in time for long enough to avoid a no-result. Lord's has been relatively high-scoring in this year's T20 Blast, with the three teams batting first posting 223, 183 and 166, but with the current batch of white balls swinging for prolonged periods at the start of an innings, conditions are likely to suit seamers early on.

Fakhar Zaman is the third-highest run-scorer in men's ODIs this calendar year, with 349 runs in four innings. Mushfiqur Rahim (407 in nine) and Paul Stirling (546 in eight) are the two men ahead of him.

Ben Stokes became the 25th England player to reach 100 caps in men's ODIs, drawing level with Nick Knight. Eoin Morgan, the man he is standing in for, has the most, with 223 (and a further 23 for Ireland).

Former pacer Wasim Akram while speaking to Ten Sports said, “I can’t say that this happened due to lack of practice as these guys have been playing PSL recently. I hope it’s just a one-off.”

He also spoke about individual performances and in particular putting top-order batsman Imamul Haq on the spot who got dismissed for a duck on the first ball.

“Imamul Haq played across the line on the very first ball. It was obvious that the bowlers would get some assistance early on and he would have been better off if he had played the ball with a straight bat,” he said.