Former Hampton School student Toby Roland-Jones has admitted being a handed an England Test call-up came as a surprise.
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Six years ago against the same opposition he hit his only Test ton in 94 games, but despite his 169 the match is remembered for all the wrong reasons.
England take on the tourists at Lord’s in the first of four matches starting on Thursday, but they will do so without leading wicket-taker Anderson, who is recovering from a shoulder injury.
“I heard about that; it’s the same before every series, you generally get a bit of trash talk”, said Root, of Wahab’s comments.
“We know that England is struggling with their middle order, Joe Root is one of their best players and he has to take the responsibility, so that’s why he is at No.3”, Wahab said.
The 24-year-old Amir is set to play his first Test this Thursday at the same venue since returning from the ban.
“In my time only Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan did well against us and they are among the very best of all time”.
“I tend to disagree a little bit because I’ve always felt that Pakistan has a bad history of fixing and all that kind of stuff”, said Raja, a member of the MCC World Cricket Committee which met at Lord’s on Tuesday.
Amir was convicted of spot-fixing a Test match at Lord’s in 2010, along with then captain Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif.
“It was obviously a hard one to know how to react to – inside you’re jumping around but you end up playing it down”. I’m sure his mates will help him.
“They have lost a few places in the middle order”, he said. “I think he will be able to perform really well”.
“I think our biggest challenge is going to be this wicket, because you look at all the Middlesex scores and they are all bore draws – 500 plays 500”, he concluded.
Jonny Bairstow replaced Buttler as wicketkeeper for the series wins over South Africa and Sri Lanka, but both could feature in England’s line-up to face Pakistan.
“But as a team, it is a unsafe place to get waylaid by that – because we could find ourselves in a lot of trouble”.
The former England spinner has lashed out at both the paceman and global cricket’s decision-makers in the build-up to the game, saying Amir should never have been allowed to walk through the famous Long Room again after his actions in 2010. And of course, when I rang him back, there was!
“I told them not to go wrong”.
Pakistan’s brilliant left-armer may still be in the headlines too, when the four-Test Investec series returns to London for its culmination at The Oval in mid-August.
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Pakistan’s four-Test series against England gets under way at Lord’s on Thursday, with the hosts looking to gain revenge for a 2-0 defeat in the United Arab Emirates late a year ago.
