Future of Pakistan’s senior players – Part One
Over the last couple of years, Pakistan have been playing some very good cricket in all three formats of the sport, which is quite extra-ordinary, taking into account the spot-fixing controversy, which arose in the middle of 2010 and
is considered to be one of the biggest scams of the game’s history.
It was widely predicted throughout the cricketing world that the Green Shirts will struggle to perform well after that scandal, which resulted in a ban on three of their premier players, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mohammad-Asif-c1993.
On top of that, no international cricket has been played in the country since the terror-attack on the Sri Lankan team outside the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, in March, 2009. Any team would battle hard to maintain consistency in their
performance, if they are deprived of playing at their own backyard.
However, such is the unpredictable nature of the Pakistan team that they always seem to raise their game whenever they are written-off.
Since the disastrous tour of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Bangladesh-c747 and England. Throughout this period, Pakistan have just lost one series,
which was against Sri Lanka earlier this year.
A number of young players have emerged through the ranks of domestic cricket in the country, proving their worth at the ultimate level of the game as well. In the presence of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Raza-Hasan-c84407
and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 cricket’s future looks to be in safe hands.
However, quite unfortunately, majority of Pakistan’s senior players have not been performing consistently since the last six months, with a lot of question-marks looming over their future.
After the Green Shirts’ defeat in the semi-final of the recently-concluded http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shoaib-Malik-c90088, Umar
Gul, Abdul Razzaq and Kamran Akmal.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/United-Arab-Emirates-c3033 (UAE), but failed to deliver the goods regularly, which is expected from cricketers of such experience.
One of the country’s former fast bowlers, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sikander-Bakht-c90277 is of the opinion that all these players should be permanently dropped from the side, asking the selectors to build a team for future.
"Its time for a change and drop Imran, Afridi, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Kamran-Akmal-c70122, Shoaib Malik, and ensure they don't come back again," said the ex-cricketer.
Another former cricketer and ex-bowling coach of the Green Shirts, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Aaqib-Javed-c41431, is frustrated by Nazir’s poor performances and failure to come to terms with international cricket.
"It's been 12 years that http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Imran-c64193 has been playing around the national team and he's yet to settle. In a player's career, a one-time sacking is enough [for one] to realise but as many as nine comeback [in his case] are still not enough
to learn a lesson," Aaqib expressed.
On his comeback, Imran, the aggressive opener, has scored just one fifty in nine T20 Internationals and two warm-up games leading to the World T20. For a top-order batsman, this performance is surely not acceptable.
About Nazir, one can safely say that the right-hander has miserably struggled to understand the importance of shot-selection at the global stage, even after making his debut 13 years ago. The opening batsman is likely to be ignored
by the selectors in future.
To be continued...
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