Frankly, Lahore's management is not suitable to run even a village cricket team. Aqib is an old-fashioned hands-off coach that believes that the role of the coach is to sit in the dugout, sip tea, and motivate players if they are feeling down. While this has worked in the past century and even worked to some extent in this tournament for his team (they did manage second place), the days of hands-off coaching are long gone.
Teams of the modern era are now backed by a team of support staff who are equally responsible for the outcome of games as the eleven players playing inside the field. No matter how much you hate, there will be boot camps and John Buchanan will remain the template of a modern coach. Past players like Shane Warne's maintained that coaches just collect fat paychecks for doing nothing but this opinion now is considered as needless noise of a disgruntled player who doesn't want to move out of his comfort zone. (Granted that Warne was the best ever leg-spinner in the history of the game in a team that had arguably the best ever fast bowler, batsman, and wicketkeeper so they didn't need to work as hard as the modern players have to do now to maintain their cutting edge but the point still stands).
The selections that the brain trust of this team makes are strange to put it politely. In most cases, these decisions are absolutely blind to logic and reason. Abdullah Shafiq has even got Pakistani color now and plays for Central Punjab yet when the time to pick a replacement player came, they selected Abid Ali instead. What use will the franchise have of selecting a player who has potential, ability, and age at his side instead of a player who doesn't even feature in the T20 team of his region? This team also had the audacity to select Salman Butt in the side. Who even came up with that brilliant idea? (We all know the answer but still anyway)
It's not his fault but Sohail Akhtar is not a player who should be captaining a franchise in a high-profile tournament. He is neither Mike Brearly when it comes to having a good cricketing mind, nor Ian Botham when it comes to pure cricketing skills. Having him as a captain ensures that you enter the playing field with a handicap. He may be an honest trier and frankly, for the most part, everyone loves an honest trier, but he doesn't fall in that category. Now that the dust has settled on the campaign, he'll get stick for a lot of failures that aren't even his own, but such is the job that he accepted that this is par for the course.
For a team that spends so much time and energy on the development program, they should also spend some time scouting the first-class and under 19 cricket players and pick the best available players from that pool. The romanticism of picking an uncut diamond plying his trade shoeless in the backstreets of Mandi Bahaud'din and turning him into an overnight starlet must end immediately. That's what this team needs to move on from instead of pinning the blame on the hapless Sohail and making him the fallout guy.
(That said, it's also time to say Akhtar goodbye and select a new captain and a team and management staff having a few data analysts and a new kit.)
