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LAHORE: All stakeholders, including captain and head coach, should accept the responsibility for Pakistan’s failure in the recently-held ICC T20 World Cup, national selector Aaqib Javed said on Saturday.
“I as a member of the [national] selection committee picked 15 players [for the T20 World Cup], while finalising the playing XI was the responsibility of the captain and the head coach. Therefore, everyone should accept the responsibility [for Pakistan’s poor show in the event],” Aaqib said in Lahore at a media conference which was the first appearance of a PCB official after Pakistan’s yet another dismal show in an ICC event.
Aaqib, who is also director of the National Cricket Academy (NCA), at the presser was flanked by selectors Misbah-ul-Haq, Sarfraz Ahmed and Asad Shafiq.
Former captains Misbah and Sarfraz were added to the national selection committee recently.
Babar Azam was unfit during global event, claims the selector
Led by Salman Ali Agha, the Pakistan side flopped at the 20-team global event held during February-March in India and Sri Lanka, crashing out in the Super Eights stage. While recording victories against relatively weaker opponents including the Netherlands, United states and Namibia in the group stage, the Green-shirts suffered a 61-run loss in the highly-anticipated group match against arch-rivals India.
After losing the Super Eights match to England by two wickets, Pakistan’s chances to qualify for the semis dwindled and eventually ended after their narrow five-run victory over Sri Lanka.
Answering a question about Babar Azam’s selection for the World Cup, Aaqib said picking the batter was not his sole decision citing a six-member panel, including four selectors, captain and head coach, discussed the matter before naming the 31-year-old in the squad.
“In the last Asia Cup we dropped Babar but then we realised that the team needed a technically sound batter for Sri Lankan pitches [in the World Cup]. Therefore, he was selected,” Aaqib said.
“However, it was up to the captain [Salman] and the head coach [Mike Hesson] to include or exclude him [Babar] for a particular match.”
Considered by some as the mainstay of Pakistan’s batting, Babar — amid criticism over his below-par strike-rate — failed badly with the bat in the T20 World Cup with scanty scores of 15, 46, 5 and 25.
In a surprising revelation, Aaqib claimed that Babar, opener Fakhar Zaman and pacer Salman Mirza were not fit so they were not selected for the ongoing ODI series in Bangladesh.
However, when highlighted that there had been no news when Babar or Fakhar got injured during the recently-held World Cup, Aaqib said that an inquiry was being conducted to know when Fakhar got unfit.
“Babar was unfit,” Aaqib said while insisting that the selectors should be kept updated by the team management about injuries, if any, to the players.
After every defeat suffered by Pakistan, some former cricketers and journalists wanted selectors, captain and even the PCB chairman to be sacked, Aaqib lamented.
“But when we look deep into our system we find that we have made a number of mistakes,” Aaqib said.
“Just compare Pakistan’s domestic cricket [system] with other cricket boards. One needs to see how much consistency we have shown in our domestic system and how many changes other countries have made, and you will get the answer,” he said.
Interestingly, under the present PCB regime of Mohsin Naqvi, several changes in domestic cricket as well as in the selection committees, coaching staff and captaincy were made during the past two years.
During this time period, changes were made in the selection committee at least five times. Aaqib himself, Wahab Riaz, Mohammad Yousuf, Abdul Razzaq, Aleem Dar, Azhar Ali and now Misbah, Sarfraz have been inducted as selectors.
Similarly, Aaqib, Yousuf, Saeed Ajmal, (Australia’s) Jason Gillespie, (South Africa’s) Gary Kirsten, (New Zealand’s) Hesson, Azhar Mahmood, Imran Farhat and Hanif Malik were employed in the coaching panel during this time.
Despite these changes, the Pakistan team could not produce any considerable performance in any ICC or ACC events during the past couple of years.
While recalling that Pakistan prior to the World Cup had whitewashed the Australian team — though a depleted one — 3-0 in a T20 home series, Aaqib said that naturally everyone expected a good show from the team in the mega event.
“But just look at the Super Eights stage, where we lost only one match against England while our game against New Zealand was washed out, and we won against Sri Lanka,” the selector said.
Against India, Aaqib underlined, Pakistan did not have an impressive record in the ICC events even during the 1990s and onwards.
Aaqib said that when Pakistan lost the home Test series against Bangladesh 2-0 and the first Test to England in Multan, he was included in the selection committee after which he talked to Gillespie, the then head coach.
“While Gillespie was not ready to change the selected [Test] team, we made [the] changes and we won the series against England [2-1],” he recalled.
In principle, Aaqib insisted, selection of the playing XI on foreign tours was the right of captain and head coach.
Aaqib said that modern-day cricket had changed and no one should expect superstars like Wasim Akram to come again, mainly due to the new ways of the evolving game.
He said except for Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah, no bowler was noticed as “different” in the World Cup “but to some extent Pakistan spinner Usman Tariq due to his bowling action was noticed”.
‘SALMAN NEEDS TIME TO IMPROVE AS CAPTAIN’
Meanwhile speaking at the presser, Misbah said that Salman needed time to improve as T20 captain.
“As captain, sometimes your decisions are proven right and sometimes not but you should learn from mistakes and that is important. So Salman should have two to three years before anyone can analyse his performance as captain,” Misbah said.
Sarfaraz Ahmad, under whose captaincy Pakistan won the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, defended the inclusion of youngsters Shamyl Hussain and Ghazi Ghori for the Bangladesh series.
About Shamyl, who failed to excel with the bat in both the matches of the series in Bangladesh, Sarfaraz said that sometimes a player could not perform in the beginning even after showing good performances at the domestic level.
“Shamyl fared well in the last two domestic seasons to get a place in the team,” the former skipper noted.
Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2026
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