Azhar Ali banking on Yasir Shah's fitness ahead of day-night Test at Brisbane

Yasir Shah is recovering from a back injury that ruled him out of Pakistan’s warm-up match at Cairns

With the day-night Test between Australia and Pakistan at Brisbane fast approaching, Pakistan are sweating on the fitness of Yasir Shah, who sat out the tourists’ warm-up match against Cricket Australia XI ahead of the three-Test series owing to a back injury.

With Mitchell Starc revealing that he has fully recovered from his leg injury, Misbah-ul-Haq’s side will be hopeful that their own premier bowling weapon makes it in time for the opening Test which begins on Thursday. 

While there has been no official updates so far concerning Yasir’s fitness, opening batsman Azhar Ali sounded confident about the leg-spinner’s recovery while briefing the media after the Pakistan side touched down in Brisbane for the series opener. 

"He's improving really well and we're really confident he will be fit for the first Test," Azhar said. 

The visitors will be playing their second day-night Test match after they emerged victorious in their pink-ball debut against West Indies at Dubai in a thrilling encounter by 56 runs. While the tour match at Cairns was also a day-night affair, Azhar, who top-scored for the visitors with an unbeaten 82 in the second innings of the three-day match, is aware that the conditions at Brisbane will be much different to the one they encountered in Dubai as well as at Cairns. 

"Playing with the pink ball in Australia is different to playing with it in Dubai, and in night conditions when the lights come on it starts to do a bit more," Ali said. "We're very satisfied with what we got although the wicket was not as quick as we thought it would be but still it was a good time in the middle. It did swing a bit, especially when the lights come on. We've got a lot of ideas about what we can do in the night time. And still in the day time also it does offer a little bit for the bowlers."

With Starc set to return for the series opener, Azhar knows that the Pakistan batsmen will have to fare much better than their Cairns’ performance in order to come out on top, especially with the pink ball set to have a major say in the outcome of the match. 

"We were very satisfied with what we got," Azhar said. "Everyone got time in the middle, that was the most important thing. Getting runs is a different thing but spending time and getting used to (the pink ball) is very important. As a batting unit, we are really confident we have all the capability and the confidence to deliver in these conditions.”

While Azhar admitted that Starc is a big threat to their chances he also felt that his side’s left-arm trio will have their own say in the match as well.

"We have a lot of left-armers but Mitchell Starc is obviously different. We're looking forward to playing him but, yeah, having three left-armers in our nets will help,” he said.