Mohammad Hafeez, Wahab Riaz among six cricketers cleared to fly to England

A three-match T20I series followed by as many Tests against Pakistan, at home, was announced by the England and Wales Cricket Board last month. The English board also announced that all members of the Pakistan squads will be flown into the UK via a charter plane at the end of the month for the series starting in August. Ahead of flying out to England, ten Pakistan cricketers tested positive for COVID-19, as reported earlier this week.

However, as of Saturday, six of those ten Pakistani cricketers had returned negative results but they were still not clear to fly out and only a 20-man squad left for England on June 28. And now, those six cricketers - Mohammad Hafeez, Wahab Riaz, Fakhar Zaman, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Rizwan, and Mohammad Hasnain- have returned negative results for the second time after they were tested on Monday. 

The PCB will now facilitate the travel of these six cricketers to the UK, where they'll join the squad in Worcester ahead of next month's series against England. Meanwhile, Shoaib Malik, who didn't fly out in the first batch of 20 players, will join the team in England on July 24 after spending some time with his family.

Pakistan 20-man squad already in UK:

Abid Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Shan Masood, Azhar Ali (Test captain), Babar Azam (Test vice-captain and T20I captain), Asad Shafiq, Fawad Alam, Iftikhar Ahmad, Khushdil Shah, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Faheem Ashraf, Mohammad Abbas, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Sohail Khan, Usman Shinwari, Imad Wasim, Yasir Shah, Musa Khan, Rohail Nazir

Players set to join squad:

Mohammad Hafeez, Shadab Khan, Fakhar Zaman, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Hasnain, Shoaib Malik (July 24)