WATCH: “For the final time”- Azhar Ali receives guard of honor after final innings in Test career
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Azhar Ali receives guard of honor after final innings in Test career
One of Pakistan’s fine modern-day batters, Azhar Ali, played his last Test in a match against England at Karachi. He announced his decision to retire on the eve of the third and final Test against England. In Pakistan’s second innings of the third match, when the prolific batter got dismissed for a duck, Ben Stokes’ men congratulated him and he received a guard of honor from his teammates.
In his last innings, he played four balls before Jack Leach cleaned him for a duck. As he was taking a final walk to the pavilion, his teammates gave a guard of honor near the boundary ropes. The official Twitter handle of Pakistan Cricket shared the video with the caption: “For the final time. Farewell @AzharAli_“. Check the video below:
“It has been a great honor and privilege for me to represent my country at the highest level,” Azhar said while announcing his retirement. “Deciding on when to call it a day is always tough, but, after contemplating deeply, I realized that this is the right time for me to retire from Test cricket,” he added.
Meanwhile, Pakistan have lost three wickets after scoring 99 runs. They are leading by 49 runs and at the crease are skipper Babar Azam at 13* and Saud Shakeel at 28* (at the time of writing this article).
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Azhar Ali’s career stats
He made his debut in 2010 against Australia. He has scored 7097 runs in 96 matches in Test. In the ODIs, he has amassed 1845 runs in 53 matches.
The 37-year-old has captained the Men in Green in nine Tests after former skipper Sarfaraz Ahmed was sacked in 2019. Under Azhar, Pakistan won two home series- against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Babar Azam became the skipper after a slump in Azhar’s form.
He is one of the four Pakistani batters to have scored a triple century when he slammed 302* against West Indies. It came in a day-night Test match, which also makes him the only Pakistani cricketer to do so. He also led the team from the 2015 World Cup to 2017 in the ODIs. But Pakistan slipped to No. 9 in the ODI rankings.
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Gouri Das
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