ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief selector Haroon Rasheed has announced Pakistan’s one-day and Twenty20 squad for the upcoming New Zealand tour.
A lot of surprises were witnessed in the squads, as Haroon continued his legacy of obliging blue-eyed players in the touring party. The biggest surprise in the entire saga was the omission of Sohail Tanveer, who was the leading T/20 wicket-taker in the 2015. Haroon has just made Tanveer scapegoat. His personal disliking and grudge against Sohail was the reason behind his exclusion from both T20 and ODI squads. It had nothing to do with on field performances.
Haroon must explain reasons behind inclusion of Wahab Riaz, who is too expensive and had not taken even handful of wickets, in the T20 format. Only one stand out performance in the world cup are not enough to remain glued with a bowler who has failed to repeat the same venom in the rest of the year. Another questionable selection is of Asad Shafiq in the ODIs as he has failed to impress on international as well as on domestic circuit for the past several months. He had hardly scored runs in the ODIs even then he got the nod of approval just because he is from the same province, where the chief selector resides. Umar Akmal is a genuine talent and a match winner, but he was only restricted to T/20 format.
Even the chief selector again went with Iftikhar Ahmed, an obvious sign how the selection matters are being governed by the PCB. As a super flop against England in the last series in UAE, he doesn’t look like international stuff just like Riffat Ullah Mehmond, who was given debut in T/20 internationals, just to rectify the old mistakes. When Riffat was young and scoring loads of runs in the domestic circuit, he was ignored. Now when he had well passed his peak days, he was inducted in the national squad. This scribe had already mentioned that Riffat would be a super flop in international cricket and the same happened. He never looked like representing national team, rather a provincial squad.
PCB had set stage only for the much-anticipated return of tainted M Aamir. Najam Sethi had taken the initiative of ensuring Aamir’s path to national squad and he is successful in achieving his goal. It makes no sense of giving another chance to a person, who had sold the motherland for few bucks. Nobody could agree with the childish argument, that Aamir was too young when he committed the blunder. It would open way for others to do the same and get away after serving few years ban. Aamir should have been made a huge example for others, so no one could dare to even think about selling the millions of Pakistanis.
Quite strangely unfit M Irfan was ignored from the shorter version of the game, where he had to bowl only four overs and he could have proved quite lethal. Instead Irfan was inducted in the ODIs, very surprising and huge eyebrows were raised, but no one in the PCB could dare to ask Haroon. What kind of selection is it?
The main reason behind green caps constant decline in all three formats of the game is just of poor selection policy. A person who had hardly scored handful of runs during his career has been given the responsibility of chief selector. There is absolutely no dearth of talent in the country. The only need is to select the squads on merit. If Haroon claims Sohail Tanveer’s fielding behind his exclusion, then not a single player in the squad could claim his place. He is super fit and had not dropped catches in the past. Even the greats like Rhodes, AB De Villars had dropped quite a few catches and missfielded on number of occasions. Umar Gul was included in Twenty20 format despite huge question marks over his fitness. He was given chance in the T20 to get much-needed confidence back.
Same is the case with Rahat Ali who again got nod. Overall selection policy looked highly dubious and clearly indicates that the PCB lacks vision, direction and no way forward. The claimed that as World T20 Cup is just round the corner, they won’t experiment more and would try to let the combination settle down. But the reality is quite different. Sohail had not only bowled well, but he had also shut his critics mouths up with more than satisfactory performances with the willow as well. Immad Wasim’s return would definitely boost Pakistan team chance. But majority of players were just compensated, rather than selected on merit.
Time is ripe, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is also the chief patron of the PCB, must do something to stop Shahryar Khan and company from further destroying the fortunes of national team. Any further delays could spell disaster and could inflict irreparable damages, which could take years to mend. Pakistan team’s chances of performing well against Kiwis and that too at their own backyard look highly grim as only a miracle could safe green caps from embarrassment in the mega event if the board continues with such absurd selection policy.