LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) made yet another alteration to the composition of the men’s national selection committee on Friday, adding retired international umpire Aleem Dar and former Test players Azhar Ali and Aaqib Javed to it.

The PCB announced the decision minutes after Pakistan were subjected to an innings defeat by England in the opening fixture of the ongoing three-match Test series against England in Multan.

According to details published on the cricket board’s website, Aleem, Aaqib, Azhar, another ex-Test batter Asad Shafiq, data analyst Hassan Cheema and the national side’s captain and the head coach are the voting members of the selection committee.

The ex-officio or non-voting members of the committee include Azhar Mahmood (assistant coach), Bilal Afzal (advisor to the PCB chairman), Nadeem Khan (director high performance) and Usman Wahla (director international cricket).

The latest change in the committee has followed former international Mohammad Yousuf’s “voluntary” resignation from it late last month, and has raised the number of selectors Pakistan have used since August 2021 to 26.

The newly rejigged selection committee, which still doesn’t have a head, met at the National Cricket Academy in Lahore on Friday afternoon and will have its eyes on picking Pakistan’s squad for the second and third Tests against England.

They will to Multan — the venue for the second Test as well — on Saturday to meet the head curator, Pakistan captain Shan Masood and red-ball head coach Jason Gillespie to finalise the squad for the fixture, the PCB said in a press release.

FAILED EXPERIMENTS

Since assuming the chairmanship of the PCB in February, Mohsin Naqvi has experimented with various selection committees and team management structures. However, these changes have failed to arrest the decline of Pakistan’s national men’s and women’s cricket teams.

The country’s recent performances have been dismal. Pakistan failed to qualify for the Super Eight stage of the ICC T20 World Cup in June and fared poorly in the 50-over World Cup held in India last year under former chairman Zaka Ashraf. The team also failed to reach the Asia Cup 2023 final.

In the past 19 months, three chairmen — Najam Sethi, Zaka Ashraf, and Mohsin Naqvi — have formed their respective teams and selection committees. Mohsin introduced a seven-member headless national selection committee, which drew criticism for including non-cricketer Bilal and lacking a chairman.

The committee has undergone changes, with Abdul Razzaq’s ouster and Yousuf’s resignation. Bilal’s role was downgraded to non-voting member. Currently, only Asad rema­ins alongside the captain and head coach.

The experiment has been deemed unsuccessful. Nonetheless, Mohsin continues to innovate, appointing umpire Aleem as a selector. Previously, Wahab Riaz was appointed senior team manager, but this decision was reversed following the team’s poor performance.

Aaqib, who is also the director cricket ope­r­ations and bowling consultant for Pakistan Super League franchise Lahore Qalandars, has joined the selection committee.

Atif Rana, owner of Lahore Qalandars, clarified to Dawn on Friday that Aaqib’s dual roles with the franchise and PCB pose no conflict of interest, citing precedents set by Inza­mam-ul-Haq, Saqlain Mushtaq and Azhar.

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2024