Pakistan return to Test cricket with a tour of Bangladesh, before travelling to England later this summer. Which players are next in line to debut for their red-ball side?
Azan Awais
21-year-old opening batter Awais only made his first-class debut in October 2024, but has already earned a call-up to Pakistan’s Test squad for their tour of Bangladesh. Interestingly enough for a youngster in this day and age, he has yet to play a senior T20 match.
Awais has been in and around Pakistan’s domestic setup ever since he was 16; in the PCB U16 One-Day Tournament in February 2021, he finished as the third-highest run-scorer in the competition, averaging just a shade under 60. By the time that calendar year was over, Awais was playing three-day cricket at U19 level. He averaged 50 with the bat from five matches in 2021/22.
He represented Pakistan at the 2024 U19 World Cup in South Africa and scored two half-centuries, including one in their semifinal loss to eventual champions Australia. That tournament preceded his breakout first-class season – in the 2024/25 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, the left-hander scored more runs than anyone else in the competition, with 844 at an average 76.7, including four centuries.
The President’s Trophy that followed yielded 578 runs as he crossed fifty five times in 14 innings. Awais got a call-up for the Pakistan Shaheens tour of England in July 2025, scoring two half-centuries in three one-day matches, and a 98 in his first three-day knock there.
In 2025/26, he put up a second consecutive 800-run season in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, and even though he averaged just 32 in the President’s Trophy, Awais had clearly done enough to impress the selectors by then.
Ghazi Ghori
Wicketkeeper Ghori averaged barely 20 in List A cricket when he made his ODI debut in Bangladesh earlier this year, but selector Sarfaraz Ahmed was clear at the time that he was the best choice to bat in the middle order as a backup for Mohammad Rizwan. Now, Ghori has been selected for the same role in the Test squad.
He averaged 40 as a wicketkeeper in the domestic U19 three-day tournament in 2020/21, before repeating the feat in his first full first-class tournament, the President’s Trophy in 2023/24. Much like Awais, Ghori has also distinguished himself more in red-ball than white-ball cricket, although opportunities for Karachi Whites have been hard to come by in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy. The majority of his career has come in the department-level President’s Trophy, for State Bank of Pakistan.
Across the last two seasons in that competition, Ghori has amassed 937 runs in 15 games, averaging 42.6. Two centuries, four fifties and 47 dismissals behind the stumps make for equally impressive reading. The upcoming Bangladesh series may not quite see his debut yet, but that moment may not be far away.
Arafat Minhas
The last 12 months or so have seen Minhas’ younger brother Sameer steal the spotlight with his performances for Pakistan U19 and in the PSL. Arafat, 21, has already played international cricket, debuting in T20I cricket at the 2023 Asian Games. He had a breakout PSL season in 2026, taking nine wickets with his left-arm spin and striking at 169 with the bat.
Read more: Five breakout players from the 2026 Pakistan Super League
Some may say that has little to do with his red-ball credentials, but it does speak to his ability to hold his own at a level comparable to international cricket. Batting mainly at seven and eight, Minhas totalled 684 runs across the most recent Quaid-e-Azam Trophy and President’s Trophy, including a career-best 152 not out for Multan against Faisalabad. He was not overly incisive with the ball, but 13 wickets at an average of 30 is not a bad haul from an all-rounder.
On his bowling alone, it would be hard for Minhas to compete with the likes of Sajid Khan, Noman Ali and Abrar Ahmed in the Test side, but when Pakistan travel to England later this year, his ability to bowl defensively and shore up the lower order with the bat could be tempting.
Mehran Mumtaz
Another left-arm spinner in the frame for Test selection could be Mumtaz, who has been in the eyes of various Pakistan selection committees for nearly a decade now. In 2017, he took seven wickets in four one-day games for Pakistan U16 against an Australia side that counted Mackenzie Harvey and Ollie Davies in their XI.
Mumtaz’s 24 wickets at 17.04 were the fourth-highest in the PCB’s National U19 Three-Day Tournament in 2019/20, and he returned 17 wickets in the competition the following year. He represented Pakistan at the U19 Asia Cup and U19 World Cup in 2021/22, having made his first-class debut for Northern against Baluchistan in November 2021.
His overall first-class record of 91 wickets at an average of 31 is rather unspectacular, but in a batting-dominated Quaid-e-Azam Trophy season this past year, he returned 24 scalps at 23.7. His solitary first-class century also came in the 2025/26 season, 125 from No.9 for Sialkot against Faisalabad. Overall this year, he made 290 runs, averaging over 40. If and when they get a chance, Minhas and Mumtaz could be in direct competition for a spot in the Pakistan Test XI.
Ali Raza
The dominance of ragging Test wickets at home in the recent past has made Pakistan a haven for spinners. But when they travel to England this summer, seamers are likely to play a more central role. They do have a good set comprising the likes of Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah and Mohammad Abbas as well as Hasan Ali and Khurram Shahzad, but a bolter in that squad could be teenager Ali Raza.
Those clued into Pakistan cricket need no introduction to the speedster, who only turned 18 less than two months ago. Raza earned himself a fan in Ian Bishop with his display at the 2024 U19 World Cup. Across that tournament and the subsequent edition in 2026, he returned a stunning 22 wickets in eight matches, counting rising stars Sam Konstas, Ollie Peake and Caleb Falconer among his victims. Raza even had the wood over Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, dismissing him for one and 26 in the 2024 and 2025 U19 Asia Cups respectively.
Raza made his first-class debut in late 2024, before he had even turned 17. He only has six red-ball games under his belt, but the record is exciting; 32 wickets at 20.5, including two five-wicket hauls. One of these came in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy final in his first season. Bowling first change, he took 3-62 against Peshawar in the first innings, before ripping through them with 7-48, ensuring Sialkot needed only 176 to win, which they did.
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