ICC Champions Trophy 2025: Why Pakistan's CT 2017 final hero Fakhar Zaman is not playing against India?

Fakhar Zaman scored 24 runs against New Zealand in Pakistan’s last match.

The much-anticipated IND vs PAK game at the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 got underway in Dubai on Sunday.

Pakistan came to this clash on the back of a loss to New Zealand in the tournament opener. This is virtually a must-win game for the Men In Green, as a loss here would leave them depending on India and Bangladesh both beating New Zealand.

India, on the other hand, hammered Bangladesh by six wickets to kick off their campaign. A win in this game would all but seal their semi-final spot.

Pakistan captain Mohammad Rizwan won the toss and elected to bat first. While India didn’t make any changes to their side that beat Bangladesh, Pakistan ringed one change to the XI that lost to New Zealand: Imam-ul-Haq replaced Fakhar Zaman as the opener.

Why is Fakhar Zaman not playing against India?

Fakhar has been ruled out of the rest of the Champions Trophy due to an oblique injury that he sustained while fielding against New Zealand. Pakistan drafted in Imam as Fakhar’s replacement.

Fakhar picked up an injury while chasing the ball to the boundary. He left the field and remained out for more than two hours. Because of spending over two hours away from the field, Fakhar could not open the batting. He came to bat at No. 4 and scored 24 off 41 balls.

Teams:

India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Axar Patel, KL Rahul(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Harshit Rana, Mohammed Shami, Kuldeep Yadav

Pakistan (Playing XI): Imam-ul-Haq, Babar Azam, Saud Shakeel, Mohammad Rizwan(w/c), Salman Agha, Tayyab Tahir, Khushdil Shah, Shaheen Afridi, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf, Abrar Ahmed

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