Pakistan to Launch More Spin Against England

Abu Dhabi: Pakistan will once more depend on spin to maintain their dominance over England when the teams meet in a four-match one-day series starting from Monday.

Misbah-ul Haq's men blanked England 3-0 in the Tests series with off-spinner Saeed Ajmal finishing with 24 wickets, left-armer Abdul Rehman taking 19 and all-rounder Mohammad Hafeez five in a spin-dominated series.

Pakistan's spin repertoire will further be boosted by all-rounder Shahid Afridi whose 5-36 helped Pakistan beat Afghanistan in a first-ever one-day between the two countries in Sharjah on Friday.

Even spinning all-rounder Shoaib Malik, controversially included in the squad despite failures in the last six one-day matches, will pose problems for England who were routed 5-0 in India last year.

Pakistan captain Misbah acknowledged Afridi's heroics as leg-spinner.

"Afridi is a match winner," said Misbah of Afridi whose 338 wickets is now the second highest by a spinner behind Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan (534) in one-day internationals.

Misbah, however, seeks improvement in his batting, especially in the top order.

England coach Andy Flower also hoped his batting improves after struggling badly against Pakistan's spinners.

"This will be a really challenging series for us. In our last one-day series in sub-continental conditions, we lost badly to India. The batsmen are lower in confidence after the Tests, so it will be a serious challenge for us," said Flower.

"I expect better things from the batsmen, and I really expect to see us improve with our knowledge and method of how to combat their spin," said Flower, adding that Kevin Pietersen will open the batting.

Pietersen had a miserable Test series, managing just 67 runs.

James Anderson and Stuart Broad who both missed the India one-day series will be on support for Tim Bresnan, Jade Dernbach and Steven Finn in pace while Samit Patel and Danny Briggs will assist Graeme Swann in spin.

Teams from

Pakistan: Misbah-ul-Haq (capt), Abdur Rehman, Aizaz Cheema, Adnan Akmal (wk), Azhar Ali, Asad Shafiq, Imran Farhat, Junaid Khan, Mohammad Hafeez, Saeed Ajmal, Umar Gul, Umar Akmal, Younis Khan, Wahab Riaz, Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik, Hammad Azam

England: Alastair Cook (captain), Ravi Bopara, James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Steven Finn, Eoin Morgan, Kevin Pietersen, Graeme Swann, Jonathan Trott, Tim Bresnan, Jonathan Bairstow, Danny Briggs, Jos Buttler, Jade Dernbach, Craig Kieswetter (wk), Samit Patel

Pitch and conditions
Expect the surfaces to turn throughout the series and there is unlikely to be much pace to work with. The weather shouldn't pose any problems although (by UAE standards) the evenings can be a little chilly.

Stats and trivia

• This will be England's first one-day international in the UAE since April 1999, when they beat Pakistan by 62 runs in Sharjah.
• The Cook-Pietersen combination will be England's 12th opening pair in ODIs since Andy Flower took over as coach (although two of those were one-off partnerships against Ireland).
• Shahid Afridi requires 107 runs to become the 7th Pakistan player with 7000 or more ODI runs.
• In 2011, Shahid Afridi took 45 ODI wickets at 20.82 and Saeed Ajmal bagged 34 at 17.08. Ajmal had an economy rate of 3.48

Match facts
Monday February 13, 2012 (day/night)
Start time 1500 local (1100 GMT, 16:00 Pak)