Shoaib, 29, who missed Pakistan's tour of India in March-April due to a hamstring injury, was still found lacking on fitness while Mohammad Sami, recuperating from a knee operation, might join the team for the Test series.

Sami was ruled out of the one-day series.

Off-spinning all-rounder Shoaib Malik was picked for the squad but will miss the first Test as he serves out a one-match ban for deliberately throwing a domestic cricket game last week.

"We have acted on the medical reports of Shoaib which said that he needed time to recover and so did Sami," Pakistan's chief selector Wasim Bari told AFP.

"This is the best available squad and we hope it will achieve the best results as it did on the recent tour of India," said Bari, referring to Pakistan's 1-1 Test series draw and 4-2 one-day win across the border.

Shoaib sustained the hamstring injury on Pakistan's tour of Australia earlier this year but has since appeared in five domestic matches, including two Twnety20 Cup matches last week.

However a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) panel of doctors found him overweight and lacking in fitness in a report submitted to the selectors.

"I am disappointed. I thought I had proved my fitness in the domestic matches and was ready to give any other fitness test but no one asked me to appear in any fitness test," Shoaib, who has so far played 36 Tests and 120 one-dayers, told AFP.

Shoaib's new ball partner Sami, who missed the last two one-day matches in India last month, also underwent surgery for the removal of a corn on his right heel earlier this week and is likely to join the team for the first Test, beginning in Barbados on May 26.

Another off-spinning all-rounder, Mohammad Hafeez, and opener Taufeeq Umar were the only two changes in the team which toured India.

Also staging a comeback was 24-year-old batsman Bazid Khan, son of former captain Majid Khan, dropped after he played two one-day matches last year.

SQUAD
Inzamamul Haq (captain), Younis Khan (vice-captain), Salman Butt, Shahid Afridi, Yasir Hameed, Bazid Khan, Yousuf Youhana, Asim Kamal, Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal, Abdul Razzaq, Navedul Hasan, Shabbir Ahmed, Shahid Nazir, Rao Iftikhar, Arshad Khan, Danish Kaneria.