Pakistan reached 137 for 2 at lunch on the opening day of the first Test against Sri Lanka at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium on Monday, with debutant Mohammad Tayyab Arif striking a maiden Test half-century, Dawn reported. Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to field first on what was described as a green-top Pindi Stadium pitch, going in with four frontline pacers and no specialist spinner.
Openers Azan Awais and Arif put on 86 runs for the first wicket before Awais, who made 30, was caught behind off Milan Rathnayaka in the 16th over. Arif, playing his maiden first-class season, kept going and brought up his fifty before Asitha Fernando had him caught behind as well, with Arif departing for 57 off 51 balls, an innings built around nine fours and a six. The wicket took Pakistan to 90 for 2.
Babar Azam and Mohammad Taha steadied the innings through to the break, with Azam unbeaten on 31 off four boundaries and Taha not out on 15. Dawn’s report noted that the captain has now gone 40 Test innings without a century, a statistic that has followed him through a lean run with the bat even as he continues to anchor the middle order.
| Batter | Runs | Balls | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azan Awais | 30 | — | c Mendis b Rathnayaka |
| Mohammad Tayyab Arif | 57 | 51 | c Mendis b Fernando |
| Babar Azam (c) | 31* | — | not out |
| Mohammad Taha | 15* | — | not out |
| Pakistan at lunch | 137/2 | ||
Arif’s call-up was only confirmed four days ago. The Pakistan Cricket Board added him to the squad on Saturday along with pace-bowling all-rounder Aamir Jamal and uncapped pacers Ali Shabbir and Saqib Khan, releasing Ali Usman and Abdullah Fazal, Dawn reported. The PCB’s move continued a broader youth push that had already seen Shan Masood dropped from the Test squad ahead of this series, a decision PakDaily covered at the time, and followed days after the board laid out its plans for a Test revival against Sri Lanka.
“This team has quite a few youngsters. The cricket board and management have decided that youngsters should be given a chance,” fast bowler Mohammad Abbas said of the new-look squad, adding: “I thank Allah that I am in form and will try to continue it.”
The match is the first of a two-Test series, with the second Test to follow in Lahore later this month. Pakistan sit bottom of the ICC World Test Championship 2025-27 standings, while Sri Lanka are seventh. The two sides have met 59 times in Tests, with Pakistan winning 23, Sri Lanka 17, and 19 ending in draws.
Our Opinion
There is something fitting about a player picked on four days’ notice outscoring everyone else in the top order on his first morning in Test cricket; it is exactly the kind of jolt Pakistan’s batting has needed, and it is also a reminder of how thin the margin has become between a long-serving captain’s century drought and a complete changing of the guard. The PCB’s willingness to keep throwing uncapped players into the XI rather than persisting with reputation picks is a reasonable response to a team stuck at the bottom of the World Test Championship table, but it only works if the structures around it — domestic cricket, fast-bowling depth, a settled middle order — are built to support it rather than just patch over the same problem every series.
