Salman Agha made 45 runs in five Test innings, and then 300 not out in Abbottabad
A fortnight after being sent home from England, Pakistan’s dropped captain batted for 336 balls in the President’s Trophy and made the highest score of his life. The PCB’s new central contracts are the reason he was there at all.
Sep 14, 2026
Salman Agha scored 45 runs in five innings across his last three Tests. That got him dropped at Lord’s and then sent home from England altogether. A fortnight later he batted for 336 balls in Abbottabad and finished on 300 not out.
It is his highest first-class score by some distance. His previous best was 169, made in a career that had taken him to the Pakistan Test captaincy and back out of the side inside one series.
How the England tour ended for him
Agha captained Pakistan in the first Test at Headingley, standing in for Babar Azam, who had a finger injury. Babar returned at Lord’s and Agha was the man who made way. Pakistan lost both of those Tests, and when the cull came he was one of seven players sent home, along with the coaches Sarfaraz Ahmed and Umar Gul.
Pakistan then lost the third Test at Edgbaston too, for a 3-0 series defeat and a 16th loss in 21 Tests. They are bottom of the nine-team World Test Championship table, which is exactly where the last cycle left them.
The contracts that put him in Abbottabad
A Pakistan Test batter turning out in the President’s Trophy is not the accident it might look. The PCB’s new central contracts make domestic first-class cricket compulsory: six matches a year for players in the A category, four for those in AB. Agha had played three first-class matches in the previous three years combined.
He is not the only one back. Shaheen Shah Afridi, who had not played a domestic first-class match in Pakistan since 2019, is turning out for Khan Research Laboratories against Ghani Glass at the Imran Khan Stadium in Peshawar, where he made 47 off 49 balls with three sixes.
Kingsmen Academy were 72 for 3
Agha came in with his side three down for 72 against Markhor IT Solutions and put on 274 for the fourth wicket with Mohammad Suleman, a 27-year-old from Hyderabad with 28 first-class matches behind him, who made 115. Kingsmen Academy declared on 565 for 7. Agha’s 300 contained 42 fours and six sixes.
The asterisk is worth stating plainly. Both teams in that match were making their first-class debuts after promotion last year, and the bowling he faced had no international experience in it. Muhammad Huraira was the only other Test cricketer in his own side. What the innings gave him was time in the middle, and that is the part he has not had. The longest he batted in any innings of his last three Tests was 60 balls, at Tarouba, for 20 runs.
“My form has not been good and it was a challenging time”
Agha put the runs down to technical work rather than a change of luck.
“My form in international cricket has not been up to the mark in the last few series,” he said in a video released by the PCB. “You make adjustments which can be very helpful. I also made slight adjustments to my batting, which has helped me a lot. I am very happy because such milestones are once in a lifetime.”
He also said he had not been chasing the number. “We were in a tricky spot with three down for 72 and I spoke to Suleman that we should look for a partnership as these are conditions in which we can post a big score if we stay in for a longer period. I was not really looking for a milestone or centuries, rather I was focused on what was at hand and was concentrating on every ball.”
On the wider point about senior players and the domestic game, he was unambiguous. “It is very important for an international cricketer to play domestic cricket and I think every cricketer should play domestic cricket when he gets an opportunity. I like to play domestic cricket and I enjoy coming back to it as I had spent 10 years here before graduating to the top level.”
“I dedicate this innings to my family,” he said. “My form has not been good and it was a challenging time, so I dedicate this innings to them.”
Does it get him back?
Not on its own, and Agha would probably say so himself. Runs against a side playing its first first-class match are not evidence that a technique holds up against a moving ball in England. But the selectors who dropped him have been the loudest voices asking senior players to go back to domestic cricket, and the first man to do it has responded with the biggest score of his life. Pakistan’s next Test assignment will be a long argument about who has earned a place, and Agha has given himself something to say in it.