Pakistan cricket coach Mickey Arthur on Thursday said that Fawad Alam needed to play aggressively to be noticed by the selectors.

During an interview with DawnNews, Arthur said the left-handed batsman was invited at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) where the selectors got a chance to "look at his [Fawad's] techniques to see how many pulls and the types of strokes he has in his armoury, and how many boundaries he hits".

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However, he said, that the discarded player, who averages 40 in one-day internationals, needs to keep scoring runs and "hit more boundaries" in order to be selected.

“It was good to have Alam at NCA. We got to know about his fitness for the longer format,” he said.

The head coach insisted that he wanted "to make sure every individual improves their performance".

Pakistan's recent climb to the top slot in the International Cricket Council (ICC) Twenty20 rankings was something to celebrate, however, he did not want players to lose focus, the coach added.

"Our T20 team is doing well and I think our ODI team is quite decent too," he admitted. "Now we need to get back to the top in Test cricket too."

Pakistan dropped to the seventh spot in the ICC Test rankings after getting thrashed by Sri Lanka in October in the first Test series after the departure of Misbahul Haq and Younis Khan.

Commenting on fast-bowler Sohail Khan, Arthur said that while he "admired the kind of work Sohail has been doing", the fast bowler was a decade too old.