Babar Azam ruled out of England Series

Pakistan's Babar Azam reacts as ice is applied to an injury caused by a ball bowled by England's Ben Stokes during the second day of play of the first test cricket match between England and Pakistan at Lord's cricket ground in London, Friday, May 25, 2018.

Babar Azam is set to miss the remaining test matches against England as he fractured his forearm following the hit  he took from Ben Stoke's ball on the 2nd day of the first test held at Lord's. Babar was on 68 when he couldn't duck a Ben Stoke's delivery and the injury was assessed and he was declared  retired hurt.  The injury was X-Rayed in the first place and only after the completion of the day the extent of the injury was known. Cliff Deacon, the Pakistan physiotherapist, said that Azam will be missing around four to six weeks of cricketing action. "We decided we were going to do a precautionary x-ray at the end of the day's play," Deacon said. Unfortunately, the x-ray confirmed there was a fracture. The fracture's in the forearm, it's one of the two bones in the forearm in the distal third of the arm, just above the wrist. That's why he couldn't hold his bat properly." The Pakistan management has not named any replacement player for Babar as the squad already contains Usman Salahuddin, Fakhar Zaman and Sami Aslam as spare specialist batsmen. Babar is being seen as the next big thing in Pakistan cricket as he has been performing consistently in the limited overs format averaging 53.00 and 51.11 in T20Is and ODIs respectively while his Test numbers have remained more modest. Before this match Azam averaged about 25 in the tests and is still to score his maiden century in the test format and given the form he had shown in the 2nd innings of the match, the injury has arrived in a bad time for the player.