Former Pakistan captains Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan have both been snubbed for the Asia Cup 2025 squad announced on Sunday. Babar and Rizwan have been ignored from Pakistan’s T20I side which will be led by all-rounder Salman Ali Agha. But Pakistan white-ball head coach Mike Hesson believes there is still chance for Babar Azam to return to the T20I set up if he can work on improving his strike-rate. Babar will get the ideal opportunity to work on this aspect as he turns out for his maiden season of Big Bash League (BBL) in Australia later this year. Babar was signed up by Sydney Sixers team as a pre-signing. The 30-year-old has turned out in 128 T20I matches for Pakistan and scored 4223 runs at an average of 39.83 but has a relatively poor strike-rate of 129.22. He has scored 3 hundreds and 36 fifties in T20I cricket. “There’s no doubt Babar’s been asked to improve in some areas around taking on spin and in terms of his strike rate. Those are things he’s working really hard on” Hesson said after the Pakistan squad announcement on Sunday. “But at the moment the players we have have done exceptionally well. Sahibzada Farhan has played six games (against Bangladesh and West Indies) and won three Player of the Match awards. A player like Babar has an opportunity to play in the BBL and show he’s improving in those areas in T20s. He’s too good a player not to consider” the former RCB team director added. Babar Azam failed to fire in ODI series in West Indies Pakistan humiliatingly lost a three-match ODI series to West Indies 2-1. It was the first ODI series loss that Pakistan have suffered against WI in the last 34 years. Hesson added that Pakistan will need to back players who have performed in recent series in Rizwan and Babar’s absence. “We were challenged with three different surfaces (in recent matches against Bangladesh and West Indies)” Hesson said. “In Lahore the surfaces were flat and the batting excelled. We went to Bangladesh where they were incredibly challenging and low-scoring games. Our top-order sets the game up. All the games we won the top order performed really well. The third game in the West Indies our openers put on 140 (138). We need that at a run rate that gets us ahead of the game. T20 is all about setting the game up and being ahead of the game all the time in case you get yourself out. From a batting point of view we’ve got a line-up that can continue to do that” Hesson added. In PSL 2025 Babar only managed 288 runs in 10 matches with 3 fifties at a strike-rate of 128.57. Overall in PSL Babar has scored 3792 runs in 100 matches at an average of 44.61 with 2 hundreds and 36 fifties at a strike-rate of 127.5. Pakistan squad for tri-series and Asia Cup 2025: Salman Ali Agha (c) Abrar Ahmed Faheem Ashraf Fakhar Zaman Haris Rauf Hasan Ali Hasan Nawaz Hussain Talat Khushdil Shah Mohammad Haris Mohammad Nawaz Mohammad Waseem Jnr Sahibzada Farhan Saim Ayub Salman Mirza Shaheen Shah Afridi Sufyan Moqim