Extra_Cover
Local Club Star
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2017
- Runs
- 2,051
- Post of the Week
- 8
The careless and carefree attitude always comes back to bite you. The glimpses of success in T20 mode and world praising some of our cricketers in T20 mode does not make us forget that our test team has been shambolic.
We have registered losses to Sri Lanka and more recently lost a series to Australia under absolutely disgraceful home conditions. That was not enough to roll heads and neither was that enough for us to understand our basic issues.
In the morning when I saw the test team I was shocked to say the least. I tried my best to understand the thought process of the management behind the selection of this team but quite literally could not make sense of most names in there. Let's start from top in there.
1. Imam ul Haq - Yes I was surprised to see his name in the team. In my opinion Shan Masood should be starting over Imam unless you drop Azhar and play Shan in his position. On Imam, he should not be playing this match given that he chose not to play recent QEA trophy. As Imam was not in national duty for T20s he has absolute no excuse to skip QEA trophy and I'm surprised no one from PCB actually had a strong word with him on doing so. Simply on not playing cricket recently and rubbish attitude he should not have played. Further to the point we have Shan who is in form of his life being made to sit out is absolutely inexcusable.
2. Azhar Ali - What are we achieving with his continued selection. Yes he did score good runs in QEA trophy recently but seriously given the conditions and home advantage would it not make sense for someone young to get runs/confidence under his belt before important away tours? The long-term thinking in here is totally missing and I can argue that in next SENA tour we would have a debutant playing at crucial number 3 post. We have a joke as think tank.
3. Saud Shakeel - I don't want to be overly critical as the guy has not done anything wrong yet. However in my books Kamran Ghulam should be ahead in priority line. Having said that Saud has scored decent runs in this year's QEA and I hope he proves me wrong. He usually has a tendency for soft dismissals and if he did not do away from that tendency then I don't see him having a long international career.
4. Agha Salman - I don't have much criticism of Agha but given we are playing 4 relatively nobodies as our bowling line-up we ideally wanted a 5th bowler to share the workload. Faheem Ashraf would have been ideal in here. Where is Faheem anyway?
5. Haris Rauf - Seriously? We have Haris playing test matches without any experience of domestics or 4 day games? Where is Hasan Ali our go to bowler for subcontinental conditions? I have nothing against Haris but every player needs a degree of domestic experience in order to be eligible to play for that format where did that came about for Haris?
6. Zahid Mehmood - We have Abrar Ahmad absolutely dominate the bowling charts in recent QEA trophy who is warming bench in here. I'm not arguing that Abrar would have been better than Zahid. All I'm saying is that form needed to be respected in here and Abrar should have had first shot at making the line-up. Had it be up to me both Abrar and Zahid would have played with Haris being dropped and Faheem being third seamer in place of Agha.
This is shocking I'm able to name 6 player from the playing XI that were selection mishaps this goes on to show that our think tank is quite literally living in a parallel world where there is no concept of accountability.
Whilst we are on this topic let's not forget the absolute disaster of the wicket this or the ones laid out previously have been. I cannot believe that our wickets are so horrible that even groundsmen cannot make it slightly competitive. We have seen the wickets in QEA trophy being pathetic to the core too. I understand this has got to do mostly with the soil underneath being firm and doesn't break easily but given advances in technology we should be able to muster a wicket of our choosing especially in international cricket. PCB and Ramiz Raja should look into this immediately as a massive concern and bring help from outside if need be to improve playing conditions.
We have registered losses to Sri Lanka and more recently lost a series to Australia under absolutely disgraceful home conditions. That was not enough to roll heads and neither was that enough for us to understand our basic issues.
In the morning when I saw the test team I was shocked to say the least. I tried my best to understand the thought process of the management behind the selection of this team but quite literally could not make sense of most names in there. Let's start from top in there.
1. Imam ul Haq - Yes I was surprised to see his name in the team. In my opinion Shan Masood should be starting over Imam unless you drop Azhar and play Shan in his position. On Imam, he should not be playing this match given that he chose not to play recent QEA trophy. As Imam was not in national duty for T20s he has absolute no excuse to skip QEA trophy and I'm surprised no one from PCB actually had a strong word with him on doing so. Simply on not playing cricket recently and rubbish attitude he should not have played. Further to the point we have Shan who is in form of his life being made to sit out is absolutely inexcusable.
2. Azhar Ali - What are we achieving with his continued selection. Yes he did score good runs in QEA trophy recently but seriously given the conditions and home advantage would it not make sense for someone young to get runs/confidence under his belt before important away tours? The long-term thinking in here is totally missing and I can argue that in next SENA tour we would have a debutant playing at crucial number 3 post. We have a joke as think tank.
3. Saud Shakeel - I don't want to be overly critical as the guy has not done anything wrong yet. However in my books Kamran Ghulam should be ahead in priority line. Having said that Saud has scored decent runs in this year's QEA and I hope he proves me wrong. He usually has a tendency for soft dismissals and if he did not do away from that tendency then I don't see him having a long international career.
4. Agha Salman - I don't have much criticism of Agha but given we are playing 4 relatively nobodies as our bowling line-up we ideally wanted a 5th bowler to share the workload. Faheem Ashraf would have been ideal in here. Where is Faheem anyway?
5. Haris Rauf - Seriously? We have Haris playing test matches without any experience of domestics or 4 day games? Where is Hasan Ali our go to bowler for subcontinental conditions? I have nothing against Haris but every player needs a degree of domestic experience in order to be eligible to play for that format where did that came about for Haris?
6. Zahid Mehmood - We have Abrar Ahmad absolutely dominate the bowling charts in recent QEA trophy who is warming bench in here. I'm not arguing that Abrar would have been better than Zahid. All I'm saying is that form needed to be respected in here and Abrar should have had first shot at making the line-up. Had it be up to me both Abrar and Zahid would have played with Haris being dropped and Faheem being third seamer in place of Agha.
This is shocking I'm able to name 6 player from the playing XI that were selection mishaps this goes on to show that our think tank is quite literally living in a parallel world where there is no concept of accountability.
Whilst we are on this topic let's not forget the absolute disaster of the wicket this or the ones laid out previously have been. I cannot believe that our wickets are so horrible that even groundsmen cannot make it slightly competitive. We have seen the wickets in QEA trophy being pathetic to the core too. I understand this has got to do mostly with the soil underneath being firm and doesn't break easily but given advances in technology we should be able to muster a wicket of our choosing especially in international cricket. PCB and Ramiz Raja should look into this immediately as a massive concern and bring help from outside if need be to improve playing conditions.
