ICC World Cup 2011: Pakistan Cricket Board to name final squad on Tuesday
The Pakistan Cricket Board will be naming its 15-member squad for the ICC World Cup 2011 on Tuesday.
Skipper http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 could however, lose his place as captain of the team because the Board previously made it clear that the Board members had not reached a consensus regarding the appointment of the clobbering batsman as the captain of the national team.
According to the PCB insiders, Afridi’s prospects as skipper have further suffered a serious blow after the Board received a report by the team management and coach Waqar Younis, criticising the role of Afridi as a leader and player in the national team.
Amongst the PCB ranks, there now seems to be a lack of consensus over retaining Afridi as the captain.
However, when the World Cup is just over a month away, the most reasonable thing would be to retain the current One Day International skipper and not gamble with a new player taking charge of the team.
It is expected that the selection committee led by chief selector http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Khan-c71319 would favour Afridi as the captain for the upcoming cricket extravaganza.
However, a commendable performance by the Test skipper http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 has made him a strong contender to take Afridi’s place as the ODI skipper.
Misbah has been adamantly backed by former http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sarfraz-c88817 Nawaz to be appointed as the captain of the national team in place of the struggling all-rounder Afridi.
The selection committee would be finalising the team without a clear verdict on the three players alleged for spot-fixing, Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif.
The players pleaded their innocence in front of an International Cricket Council tribunal that heard their cases in Doha early in January 2011. Initially it was reported that the tribunal would be giving its verdict on 11 January right after the closing
statements of the lawyers of the players. But on the request of Mohammad Amir’s lawyer, Shahid Karim, the ICC decided to defer the verdict until 5 February.
With this development it was clear that there was no way the three players would have any chance of playing the World Cup, but according to the PCB chairman http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ijaz-Butt-c64128, the three players would be included in the squad at the last moment if they get acquitted
from all spot-fixing related charges in the verdict.
“The squad is to be announced on January 19 but if any of these players gets a clean chit on February 5 he can be considered for late inclusion in the World Cup squad,” said Butt while he was visiting a site of an under construction cricket ground in the
city of Larkana, Pakistan.
Mohammad Yousuf is also expected to miss out of the 15-member squad due to fitness issues. According to insiders, the Board is not satisfied by the middle order batsman’s physical fitness and they are not ready to put an injured player on the plane for the
World Cup.
However, skipper Shahid Afridi had expressed his desire to retain Yousuf in the squad. Afridi had insisted that he wanted experienced players for the World Cup and no one was more experienced than Yousuf in the team.
Pakistan’s expected 15-member squad: Shahid Afridi (captain), Abdul Razzaq, Mohammad Hafeez, Ahmed Shehzad, Umar Akmal, Kamran Akmal, Misbah-ul-Haq, Umar Gul, Saeed Ajmal, Abdur Rehman, Shoaib Akhtar, Younus Khan, Asad Shafiq,
Wahab Riaz, and Sohail Tanvir.
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