PCB serves up another controversy as the team for the UAE Series is announced sans captain
The Pakistan Cricket Board has served up another controversy by announcing the ODI and T20 team for the South African series in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/United-Arab-Emirates-c3033 without naming a captain in the fifteen member squad.
The unexpected development was made by the PCB in a hurriedly arranged press briefing where none of the selectors were available for comment.
The announcement was made by the Director of Media, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760 and left for his office immediately after finishing
with the names.
The media director refused to reveal the reasons for not divulging the name of the captain at a time when the cricketing circles in the country were taking the retention of Shahid Afridi as the leader of the limited overs team
as a mere formality.
It seems that the PCB and the team management, led by Waqar Younis, is not happy with Afridi’s attitude on the controversy plagued tour of England where the team narrowly lost the ODIs besides succumbing to a 2-0 defeat in the
T20 series held in Cardiff.
Speculations are rife since the announcement of the squad that Waqar has persuaded the Chairman of the Cricket Board to name an alternate captain in place of Shahid Afridi. Yet it is not clear as to who would get the nod for the
upcoming series which is being touted as preparation for the 50 overs World Cup that is to take place in the sub-continent next February-March.
Even if that is the case, then cricket fans and pundits across the country are bewildered as to what prompted Waqar and the now retired manager Yawar Saeed to submit a negative report against Afridi whose captaincy was hailed by
all and sundry in England, especially in the aftermath of the spot fixing scandal that tarnished the image of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 cricket.
Another diabolical decision is the appointment of Intikhab Alam as the manager of the team for the tour; the veteran coach of the World Cup winning teams of 1992 and 2009 had a major fall out after the tour of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 where he
was the head coach.
In the subsequent inquiry that was held at the end of the ill-fated tour where Pakistan lost all its international matches, Intikhab had claimed that some of the players in the team were “mentally challenged” and had no social
manners.
He was then asked to perform his duties at the National Academy in Lahore and was sidelined from the management of the team; yet for absolutely no logical reason the veteran former test captain has returned as team manager.
It seems that whatever the world says, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ijaz-Butt-c64128 is not going to do away with the duo of Intikhab and Yawar Saeed – both of whom have done no good to Pakistan cricket in recent years and have been involved in one controversial
tour after another.
The team was announced is: Imran Farhat, Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Yousuf, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482, Abdul Razzaq, Umar Gul, Saeed Ajmal, Abdur Rehman, Shoaib Akhtar, Tanveer Ahmed, Zulqarnain
Haider (wk)
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