Alam has not played Test cricket since November 2009

Image courtesy of: ESPNcricinfo

Pakistan all-rounder Fawad Alam is on track to make his Test comeback after nearly six years as he was included in the 15-man squad for the upcoming series against England.

Alam, whose last Test came against New Zealand in November 2009, made a case for himself by scoring two centuries and five fifties in 14 first-class innings over the last 12 months. As a result, the national selectors drafted him into the squad at the expense of Babar Azam.

“Our Test team has been an established team for years now and it is hard to make room for any new player,” Pakistan chief selector Haroon Rasheed told ESPNcricinfo. “Fawad Alam was in our plan for months now after his performance and we know he had been knocking at the selectors’ door for years in fact. We have added him to the squad in a bid to get ourselves ready for the transition after Misbah as we obviously need to have guys like him when our seasoned players fade away.”

Pakistan will also have a full-strength pace attack for the Test series as Wahab Riaz has recovered from a hand injury he sustained in Sri Lanka, while Junaid Khan has retained his place on the Test roster despite not being in the best of form as of late.

“They are our investment and we would like to persist with them,” Rasheed said. “Both might have been low in confidence for some time now but we aren’t judging them on the basis of T20 performance. At the top level they will definitely come hard and with a different state of mind. We have named Junaid in the A team so that he can get ample time to get himself ready for the Test series.”

Pakistan Test squad: Ahmed Shehzad, Shan Masood, Azhar Ali, Mohammad Hafeez, Fawad Alam, Asad Shafiq, Misbah-ul-Haq (capt), Younis Khan, Sarfraz Ahmed (wk), Yasir Shah, Zulfiqar Babar, Wahab Riaz, Imran Khan, Rahat Ali, Junaid Khan