The woes that plague Pakistan cricket

KARACHI: The World Cup ended for Pakistan at the quarter-final stage and immediately ‘fresh’ pledges started emanating out of the Pakistan Cricket Board's headquarters.

Misbahul Haq’s baton was handed over to Azhar Ali and chairman Shaharyar Khan claimed that Azhar’s domestic performances convinced him but the 30-year-old hasn’t played an ODI in over two years.

The question that burns is what batting position Azhar will occupy? Babar Azam, Sami Aslam and Sarfraz Ahmed are the openers and Muhammad Hafeez is at number three; so where will Azhar bat? It seems that either Hafeez will sit out or Sarfraz will occupy his previous position at number seven.

Azhar’s below par strike rate of 65 is only going to increase the pressure on the batsmen around him. If Azhar was favoured because of his ODI average, then why was Fawad Alam, with an even better average and a healthier strike rate, ignored?

The left-hander from Karachi has accumulated 948 runs in 36 ODIs with a healthy average of 45.14, while his strike rate of 75.05 is also better. Azhar on the other hand, has scored 452 runs in 14 matches with an average of 41.09 and a strike rate of 64.84.

 

Fixing continues to be rampant

Fancy-fixing — in which bets are made over specific passages of the game — is rife in world cricket and Pakistan are also plagued by it. In the World Cup, Sarfraz Ahmed, seems to have broken all bets when he batted as an opener.

To facilitate fancy-fixing, the openers — who it seems are being selected from Lahore rather than Pakistan — act as punters and play as per the directions of the bookies.

Unfortunately, people in Pakistan don’t know much about fancy fixing, or perhaps they don’t want to learn about it.

 

The new selection committee

The PCB chairman also assembled a brand new selection committee under Haroon Rasheed. The irony is that those who didn’t have an impressive record in their playing days now get to select the players. The media also holds them in high regard due to their tendency of leaking news and documents.

The new selection committee under Haroon ignored prolific first-class performer Naeemuddin just because he is 33 years old but we have several players older than him across all formats.

The left-handed opening batsman from Gujranwala and SNGPL has scored 4,711 runs at an average of 43.62 in 72 matches. He has hammered 14 centuries and was a deserving candidate for the Bangladesh tour.

Another surprise omission was of Ahmed Shehzad — was Shehzad dropped because of his attitude? So then why is he in the T20 squad? Shehzad score heavily in 2014. If he has an attitude problem, then the management can do better than making a victim out of him.

Rasheed did talk about future as well and vowed to build up a pool of players to replace those in the national side, but for this we need to mend our domestic structure.

 

Bangladesh series

Despite the recent turmoil engulfing the team, I remain confident about Pakistan’s success against Bangladesh. However an adverse result won’t surprise me either.

Bangladesh played impressively in the World Cup and qualified for the quarter-finals, beating England along the way.

In Tests, Younus Khan is the only world class cricketer in the side but his potential has never been truly recognised.

The media always portrayed Shahid Afridi as a star player, however neither Afridi nor Misbah are world class and that was the reason neither of them were mentioned in the World Cup final ceremony with the likes of Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Michael Clark and Daniel Vettori.

 

 

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