Haris Sohail

Haris Sohail Player Profile

An elegant, intuitive batter, Haris Sohail had to deal with a long period of injuries before he could finally make his Test debut, and when he did in 2017, it was while dealing with the expectation that he could fill the black hole left in Pakistan's middle order by the simultaneous retirements of Younis Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq.

Haris managed to carry that burden - as well as live through the criticism that he had been unfairly picked over the more talented Fawad Alam - in his debut series, scoring two half-centuries, although Pakistan lost the series 0-2 to Sri Lanka. He struggled more in the challenging conditions in England in 2018, but showed that he had the stomach for a fight, especially while dealing with the moving ball against James Anderson and Stuart Broad at Lord's.

By that time, Haris was already a more or less regular fixture in the ODI side, with 2015 being a particularly productive year for him - he scored 494 runs at 44.9 in 13 innings, including four half-centuries in five matches. He played the 2015 and 2019 World Cups, scoring attractive match-winning half-centuries against South Africa and New Zealand in the latter. He was also part of the squad that won the 2017 Champions Trophy, although he didn't get a game in the tournament.

He got his first Test hundred in 2018, a gritty knock in a draw against Australia in Dubai. A month later, at the same venue, he ground out 147 in an innings win over New Zealand. He was forced out of the end-of-the-year tour of South Africa hours before the first Test because of a knee injury flare-up.

His first Test call-up, back in 2013, had also been for a tour to South Africa, which he had to drop out of because of an ankle injury. Between 2009 and 2012, he was prolific in first-class cricket, averaging 54. In the President's Trophy in 2012-13, he scored 673 runs at 134.6, including four hundreds and two fifties. In 2014, he scored a hundred for Pakistan A in Sharjah against an Australian attack that featured Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon.

But when Haris got the chance to tour Australia, with the Test side in 2019, he struggled with the bounce and was dropped for the rest of the tour. He opted out of the 2020 tour of England - played in a Covid-19-induced bubble - and briefly returned to the Test side before becoming one of the many casualties of Pakistan's series loss in New Zealand in 2021. He lost his central contract the same year, and injuries kept him out of several white-ball series as well.