Australia host England and India host South Africa in upcoming Boxing Day clashes.
As the above table shows, the upcoming South Africa vs India three match Test series will be contested between two teams who Pakistan won’t face in the ICC World Test Championship qualifying stages. But of course, they could meet Pakistan in the one off final.
Pakistan have currently won their last 3 Tests and all of those have been away from home. While admittedly they may not have played highly ranked opposition, it is important to look at the margins they dominated by and how they’ve managed to set up victories in West Indies and Bangladesh when they’ve had weather taking significant time out of the game.
They showed an immense amount of character to level the series in the West Indies after a demoralizing narrow one wicket loss in the first Test. And in Bangladesh, it is not easy to clean sweep the home side. England and Australia both drew 1-1 on their previous Test engagement in Bangladesh in 2016 and 2017 respectively as an example.
Given their start to this edition of the ICC World Test Championship and their upcoming remaining Test schedule for this cycle of playing all series in favourable Asian conditions, Pakistan appear to be the front runners to make the top two.
Pakistan have 8 of their next 10 Tests at home and their next fixture is currently scheduled for 3rd of March against Australia in Karachi.
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