{"id":37504,"date":"2026-01-25T09:04:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T09:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=37504"},"modified":"2026-01-25T09:04:29","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T09:04:29","slug":"pakistan-announce-squad-for-icc-mens-t20-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=37504","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan announce squad for ICC Men&#8217;s T20 World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Pakistan squad for the International Cricket Council (ICC) Men\u2019s T20 World Cup 2026 was unveiled during a press conference at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n<p>The conference was addressed by Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Director High Performance and member of the men&#8217;s national selection committee, Aqib Javed, alongside Pakistan&#8217;s T20I Captain Salman Ali Agha, and White-Ball Head Coach Michael James Hesson.<\/p>\n<p>Road to \ud83c\udfc6 2026 begins!<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf0 Squad unveiled for the ICC Men\u2019s T20 World Cup \ud83c\udf0d<\/p>\n<p>Read More \ud83d\udc49\ud83c\udffb https:\/\/t.co\/iooMXUS5g6#BackTheBoysInGreen #T20WorldCup pic.twitter.com\/VOSkvs05MC<br \/>\n\u2014 Pakistan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) January 25, 2026<\/p>\n<p>Skipper Salman Ali Agha, Faheem Ashraf, Khawaja Mohammad Nafay, Mohammad Salman Mirza, Sahibzada Farhan and Usman Tariq have all received their first call-ups to represent Pakistan at a major tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The squad also includes nine players with previous World Cup experience; Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Fakhar Zaman, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, Saim Ayub, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shadab Khan and Usman Khan, all of whom have featured in at least one edition of the tournament since 2021.<\/p>\n<p>In the 20-team tournament, each side will play four group games before progressing to the Super Eight and knockout stages. The competition runs from February 7 to March 8.<\/p>\n<p>Read: PCB unveils schedule for Pakistan, Australia T20I series<\/p>\n<p>Placed in Group A, Pakistan will begin their World Cup preparations with a three-match T20I series against Australia at the Gaddafi Stadium on January 29, 31 and February 1. The preparation camp commenced on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>The team will then face the Netherlands in their opening match on February 7 in Colombo.<\/p>\n<p>The final squad includes Captain Salman Ali Agha, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Fakhar Zaman, Khawaja Mohammad Nafay, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Salman Mirza, Naseem Shah, Sahibzada Farhan, Saim Ayub, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shadab Khan, Usman Khan, and Usman Tariq.<\/p>\n<p>The cricket tournament will run without Bangladesh\u2019s participation. The team has been replaced with Scotland, which will take Bangladesh\u2019s spot in Group C, the ICC announced on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The decision came after the ICC rejected the Bangladesh Cricket Board\u2019s request to move its matches from India to Sri Lanka, citing the absence of any credible or verifiable security threat to the Bangladesh team in India.<\/p>\n<p>Read More: Naqvi says Bangladesh treated \u2018unfairly\u2019 by ICC over India dispute<\/p>\n<p>After the announcement, Pakistan\u2019s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi criticised what he described as the unfair treatment of Bangladesh, saying no country should be allowed to dictate terms to another in international cricket.<\/p>\n<p>Naqvi, who also serves as Chairman of the PCB, said he had raised Pakistan\u2019s concerns directly at ICC forums, urging the world governing body to treat all member nations equally.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pakistan squad for the International Cricket Council (ICC) Men\u2019s T20 World Cup 2026 was unveiled during a press conference at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on Sunday morning. The conference was addressed by Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Director High Performance and member of the men&#8217;s national selection committee, Aqib Javed, alongside Pakistan&#8217;s T20I Captain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}