Pakistan opt to bowl again; three changes for New Zealand

Pakistan need 213 runs in 105 balls.

Both teams had to make injury-forced changes

Toss Pakistan chose to bowl vs New Zealand

Pakistan captain Shaheen Shah Afridi won his third toss in a row in the T20I series and again opted to bowl, with hopes of keeping the series alive. Like they had announced on the eve of the game, they made three changes to their XI with Mohammad Wasim, Mohammad Nawaz and Zaman Khan coming in for Abbas Afridi, Usama Mir and Aamer Jamal.

New Zealand, 2-0 ahead in the series, also made three changes by bringing in Tim Seifert for Kane Williamson, and Matt Henry and Lockie Ferguson for Adam Milne and Ben Sears.

Pakistan had announced their XI on the eve of the game, saying Abbas had a low-grade abdominal wall muscle strain. Bringing in Zaman would be to strengthen their death-overs arsenal and Jamal must have lost his place after leaking 97 runs in the first two games.

For the hosts too, one change was forced as Williamson had been ruled out with a hamstring injury he picked up during the second T20I. The other two changes were in the pace attack even though Milne had taken a four-for in the second game.

Pakistan: 1 Mohammad Rizwan, 2 Saim Ayub, 3 Babar Azam, 4 Fakhar Zaman, 5 Iftikhar Ahmed, 6 Azam Khan (wk), 7 Mohammad Nawaz, 8 Shaheen Afridi (capt), 9 Mohammad Wasim Jnr, 10 Haris Rauf, 11 Zaman Khan

New Zealand: 1 Finn Allen, 2 Devon Conway, 3 Tim Seifert (wk), 4 Daryl Mitchell, 5 Glenn Phillips, 6 Mark Chapman, 7 Mitchell Santner (capt), 8 Matthew Henry, 9 Ish Sodhi, 10 Tim Southee, 11 Lockie Ferguson

Vishal Dikshit is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

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