Our selection decisions usually are horrible and we are bad at preparing the next generation of players - there’s no doubt about that. But Imad being dropped was a perfectly fine decision at the time.
The reason Babar and Rizwan keep their place in the team is because they’ve been two of the best performing batsmen in our entire team since they both made their debut. In Tests and ODI Rizwan is arguably our highest performing WK batsmen ever.
The other reason they’ve kept their spot is because the other avenue which we usually find T20 talent - the PSL - Babar and Rizwan have still remained some of the highest performing players. If they’re outperforming their replacements in the exact place we usually find their replacements - then it’s no surprise at all that they’re kept their spot.
Shaheen Shah, I agree with you that there was a good argument that he should have been at the very least rested. I don’t think the management of his playing time post injury was done well. Despite that though he still remains one of our best performing bowlers, including in the WC where I believe he took the most wickets for our team.
Can you give me other examples of where the highest scoring batsmen or highest wicket taking bowlers were dropped from a team?
Also, I think I probably am done with the Imad discussion. I’ve probably said everything I had to say about the matter and I respect your opinion because I believe you give it in a respectful manner even though we disagree about how good/important Imad is. I think this forum has had thousands of posts about Imad and Imad vs Babar so I think everything that could be said about them has probably been said.
Babar and rizwan kept their place in the team mainly because saim was raw, haris is a hack and fakhar wasn't kicking off. Ontop of that to give credit to those 2, they atleast chase down 200 scores consistently against c to d string.
The main issue however at the end of the day was always political, so ignoring the political side and looking at it from a merit perspective,
Imad didn't do well in 2021, I agree, my point I'd the others did worse during the 2022 outing. When it comes to Nawaz, Theirs a thing called hindsight and observation, for example if you look at haris and saim ayub, Haris was the breakout star in 2022 world cup at no 3, Saim ayub on the other hand via performances was a bit lack luster, but what cricket boards do is that their able to recognise this fact, its why NZ correctly identified that someone like rachin who wasn't doing to well, or someone like rohit sharma who was terrible pre 2013, would be perfect replacements in the future over people like will young.
With one observation you can tell saim ayub is superior to haris, since the former has solid shots, good technique and good footwork, he's lacking in temperament and is uneducated about shot selection but he's obviously a far superior investment compared to haris who seems like he doesn't even know the difference between front foot and back foot, he just randomly rushes to attack blindly like a discount shahid afridi.
With one observation you can tell that nawaz was going to collapse and miserably so, just like I predicted that agha would fall flat despite him supposedly scoring multiple 50's during NZ c series.
Why? Because Nawaz cannot spin the ball, and is full pitched deliveries may have worked occasionally but they would eventually get exposed whereas imad's darters atleast were more economical in t20 In the long run.
In terms of batting, Nawaz's 42/20 is a fluke, its no different then haris' innings, nawaz doesn't know how to bat plain and simple, with imad you can tell he knows how to bat and clearly has better match and lower order pressure temperament, his psl performances aren't a suprise or a 3x fluke by any means.
Stats will never tell the full story ever, I'm not saying their not important, but visual observation in games is more important, for example I can tell that babar isn't great against spin bit he's good enough against pace, stats would not tell me that, stats tell me he's better then kohli lol.
As for shaheen, I don't want him removed, he's good, I love his killer inswing, I was just exposing the double standards of selection.
You can't claim we will drop imad for a short term temporary hack who'll fail because imsd is lack luster but not use the same argument for Babar and rizwan and shaheen and just replace them with people haris who'll only give you short term results at opening but will eventually get exposed.
If we're using hypocritical logic on imad, them the same logic applies to babar and rizwan, let's replace babar for haris since haris outperformed in 2022, and when haris fails, let's go to babar's House and apologise to babar and get him back in, oh and meanwhile let's also have all of pindi thrash babar while we're at it.