I am referring to genuine Test quality all-rounders who can win you a Test match with either bat or ball.
An Abdul Razzaq, Wasim Akram, Imran Khan type cricketer. Where are these types of cricketers and why isn't Pakistan producing them any more?
The answer, to be honest, is a decade worth of Misbah-ul-Haq controlling the national team, with just 2 years from June 2017 to July 2019 when he was not calling the shots.
I'm always clear that there are three types of all-rounder:
1. A Batting all-rounder like Kallis or Stokes, who is a genuine Top Six batsman who can be the fourth seamer.
2. A Bowling all-rounder like Hadlee or Wasim Akram or Johnson who is apace spearhead but sometimes scores runs.
3. A Balanced all-rounder like Imran Khan who can bat at 7 and is at least 3/4 of a batsman and 3/4 of a bowler. Jason Holder is a good example of this: he balances the team but isn't quite as good as the specialist batsmen or bowlers - but the sum of the parts is better than both.
Unfortunately Misbah has made clear all along that an all-rounder must be either good enough to be in the team as a specialist batsman or bowler.
If you look at the likes of Imran Khan, Andrew Flintoff, Jason Holder or Kapil Dev, when they got into the team they didn't meet Misbah's condition of being good enough to be selected as a specialist bowler or batsman. They developed after they were selected, but were first selected when other older options were still better at the specialist roles.
Misbah would not have picked Jason Holder instead of Darren Sammy, and he wouldn't have picked either ahead of Tino Best or Kemar Roach. He wouldn't have picked Kapil Dev ahead of Karsan Ghavri.
Like you, I doubt that Amad Butt is good enough. But I just don't see why he couldn't be in a 29 man squad to England to see how he develops with 8 weeks in the nets against the best players. But Misbah on principle won't pick him unless he's either a better bowler than Sohail Khan or a better batsman than Fawad Alam - and so no young pace bowling all-rounder can emerge.
In the absence of a pace bowling all-rounder at Number 7, and with Mohammad Rizwan clearly good enough to bat at Number 6, I would automatically go for s spin-bowling all-rounder at Number 7 - either Shadab Khan or Imad Wasim. But again, Misbah argues that Shadab isn't a better batsman than Fawad, and that Yasir Shah is a better bowler than Shadab, so we end up stuck with 6 batsmen, Rizwan at 7 and just 4 bowlers and only 3 quicks, all of whom are quickly exhausted and down on pace.
So Misbah keeps picking teams with too many specialists, fails to notice that he has four Number 11's, and presides over endless collapses in SENA.
I look att her current squad and can't see how you can avoid picking Shadab at 7 and Faheem at 8. But I also don't see how you can pick Abbas AND Shaheen AND Naseem, because if you do, 7 out is all out!
