Faisal Iqbal has done excellently with Balochistan. Very positive cricket, and he’s played something like 18 players over the course of 10 games, promoting youngsters and developing them, and being very competitive with a gang of misfits and even despite losing Yasir Shah, Kashif Bhatti, Imran Butt, and Sami Aslam in one fell swoop. They ended up placing 5th, but that hides behind it the way they played and performed.
Him, Shahid Anwar, and Abdul Razzaq were the standout coaches after Wasim this year.
Abdul Rehman has been quite underwhelming at Southern Punjab in terms of positive cricket played, and the results are only decent, but he has a wealth of experience behind him and is known to be a good coach, so I would retain him.
Basit Ali has been shockingly bad. He doesn’t promote youngsters much, gives shockingly large backing to people like Khurram Manzoor, Shehzar Mohammad, and more, failed to give Abrar Ahmed a consistent run, and I think recently played Azam Khan at number 3 if I’m not incorrect, rather than Saud Shakeel or even Asad Shafiq.
A lot of cricket played by Sindh has been defensive, and they are not just ranked 6th but a distant 6th. This is despite Omair and Sharjeel being the best opener combination in the competition, Saud being the second highest run scorer, and Asad Shafiq only recently dropped from the Test team. Between Tabish Khan, Shahnawaz Dhani, and Mir Hamza, they have one of the most exciting attacks in the tournament only after Central Punjab’s Hassan-Waqas combination. To fall short by such a large margin suggests a gross incompetence especially when one of the missing ingredients was a strike spinner, and they failed to promote people like Abrar (consistently) or Aarish Ali Khan, who didn’t even get a second XI look in.
After Sindh U19 dominated BOTH the one day and three day cups, Basit failed to promote the likes of Saim Ayub, Adeel Meo, and Aaliyan Mehmood to the second XI QeA trophy, and they finally only got a look in during the second XI one day cup. Even during this cup, Aaliyan Mehmood was ignored, and only Saim and Adeel selected.
Earlier in the national T20 cup, Asad Shafiq was played!!! during the T20 games and unsurprisingly he flopped when they needed him the most. Sohail Khan!!! batted at 5 in the semifinal. Danish Aziz had to rescue the team TWICE from situations where the top 5 had collapsed and they still didn’t promote him. Kartay kartay martay martay they made it to 3rd place in the table, but that conceals the absolutely horrible standard of cricket, Sharjeel’s failures, over reliance on Azam Khan and Danish Aziz, and failure to promote Hasan Mohsin or Hasan Khan.
For Northern, Wasim did an excellent job but has now been given the position of Chief Selector with Mohammad Masroor replacing him. Let me tell you a bit about this guy. He coached Sindh U19 to the one day and three day cups in 2019. He has a dozen age group titles from U13 to U19 for Sindh and Karachi. Here are some of the kids he’s worked with: Saud Shakeel, Mohammad Umar, Mohammad Asghar, Mohammad Taha, Aamir Ali, and Saim Ayub.
He was part of Northern’s team already this year and his promotion to head coach is well deserved. I would retain him.
In sum, my picks would be as follows:
KPK: Abdul Razzaq (retained)
Central Punjab: Shahid Anwar (retained)
Balochistan: Faisal Iqbal (retained)
Northern: Mohammad Masroor (promoted)
Southern Punjab: Abdul Rehman (retained on probation)
Sindh: ______ (interviews to be held with Yasir Arafat, Moin Khan, Taufeeq Umar and others)
I would not fast track Umar Gul - he can be made assistant coach and also put into an ECB accredited coaching program, with a goal of developing his coaching credentials for 2-3 years from now.
