Kane Richardson ruled out of Pakistan tour with hamstring injury

Kane Richardson has been ruled out of Australia's limited-overs tour of Pakistan due a hamstring injury and will be replaced by New South Wales left-armer Ben Dwarshuis.

Richardson, who was the most experienced pace bowler in an already depleted squad, aggravated the injury during training in Melbourne ahead of the team's departure to Lahore.

"Although the injury is considered minor it was decided the long trip to Pakistan along with four games in eight days and short turnarounds it was in Richardson's best interests to remain home," a Cricket Australia statement said.

Dwarshuis, who also plays for Sydney Sixers, is uncapped at international level but was previously part of Australia's T20 squad during a tri-series in 2017-18 and has been part of the IPL. If he features in the ODI side during the three-match series, it would come after just nine List A matches for New South Wales.

Richardson's absence leaves the pace attack to be led by Jason Behrendorff and Sean Abbott alongside Nathan Ellis, supplemented by allrounders Mitchell Marsh, Cameron Green and Marcus Stoinis.

Multi-format quicks Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins have been rested for the white-ball portion of the tour. Hazlewood and Cummins are both part of the upcoming IPL.

Captain Aaron Finch was confident the squad still had the depth to compete in Pakistan.

"One thing that will help is the guys have played a lot of T20 cricket," he said. "They're quite inexperienced for Australia but I think playing T20 cricket will help them in that regard. There's a lot of skill in the group and guys that have been around one-day cricket for a long time domestically as well.

"Having a lot of a lot of faith in their own ability is really important. When you have got guys like Abbott, he's been around for a long time [and] Behrendorff. They've played a lot of state cricket, so I think it'll be fine."

Australia only played three ODIs last year - on the tour of West Indies - with home matches this season against New Zealand postponed due to Covid-19 border restrictions. They have won all three of their series in the ODI Super League with 2-1 victories over England (away) and India (home) alongside the West Indies success.