Abu Dhabi, Dec. 03 (TNS): New Zealand captain Kane Williamson won the toss and elected to bat in the third and final test against Pakistan on Monday.<\/p>\n
Pakistan leveled the series 1-1 last week with a resounding innings and 16-run victory in the second test after New Zealand won the first test narrowly by four runs at Abu Dhabi last month.<\/p>\n
Leg-spinner Yasir Shah is on the brink of setting a record as the quickest bowler to reach 200 test wickets, after demolishing New Zealand with his 14-wicket haul in the second test.<\/p>\n
Shah has taken 195 wickets in 32 tests. Australian Clarrie Grimmett holds the record, having taken his 200th wicket in his 36th test, in 1925.<\/p>\n
Pakistan awarded a test debut to 18-year-old left-arm fast bowler Shaheen Afridi after Mohammad Abbas was ruled out due to a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n
New Zealand made two changes from the team which lost heavily to Pakistan in Dubai. The visitors awarded a test cap to tall 34-year-old off-spinner Will Somerville in place of leg-spinner Ish Sodhi. Experienced seamer Tim Southee, who didn’t feature in the last two test matches, replaced Neil Wegner.<\/p>\n
Lineups:
\nPakistan: Imam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Hafeez, Azhar Ali, Haris Sohail, Asad Shafiq, Babar Azam, Sarfraz Ahmed (captain), Bilal Asif, Hasan Ali, Yasir Shah, Shaheen Afridi.<\/p>\n
New Zealand: Tom Latham, Jeet Raval, Kane Williamson (captain), Ross Taylor, Henry Nicholls, B.J. Watling, Colin de Grandhomme, Will Somerville, Tim Southee, Ajaz Patel, Trent Boult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Abu Dhabi, Dec. 03 (TNS): New Zealand captain Kane Williamson won the toss and elected to bat in the third and final test against Pakistan on Monday. Pakistan leveled the series 1-1 last week with a resounding innings and 16-run victory in the second test after New Zealand won the first test narrowly by four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80528,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80526\/revisions\/80528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}