Pakistan 'A' team for England tour today (12 June 1997)

12 June 1997

Pakistan 'A' team for England tour today

By Our Sports Reporter

KARACHI, June 11: The selectors assemble here in the city on Thursday afternoon to finalise a 15-member Pakistan A team for the seven-month tour of England starting later this month.

The meeting was expected today (Wednesday) but because of the preoccupations of Zaheer Abbas and Haroon Rasheed, it had to be put off for Thursday. Salim Altaf, Chairman of Selectors, will fly into the city in the afternoon and after preparing the team with Zaheer and Haroon is expected to fax it to the cricket headquarters in Lahore for completion of formalities like Council's approval of the team and appointment of the captain.

The selectors are on the horns of dilemma as till today they have not been informed who will be leading the team to England. One school of thought is that the captain will be picked from the selected players while the other is that the captain should be named first so that the selectors can only pick the remaining 14 players. The appointment of captain is being taken up as an important subject because it will reflect the future leadership of the Pakistan cricket team. While a team for the 1999 World Cup is being prepared, a captain to succeed Wasim Akram is also a matter which is significance and importance.

So far, the captaincy in the absence of Wasim Akram is being given on ad hoc basis. It is either Ramiz Raja in charge or Saeed Anwar or Ijaz Ahmad when Akram is out of commission. Need not to mention that in the last four years, seven cricketers have led Pakistan on various occasions. Investigations reveal that the selectors were thinking to retain Asif Mujtaba as captain for the England tour simply because he is a senior cricketer having captained junior teams previously. Mujtaba, who has played 25 odd Tests, was also the captain of the team that won the SAARC Gold Cup in Dhaka earlier this year. "We are considering Asif Mujtaba but only as a captain. If he will not be the captain, he might not be in the team," a selector commented on the condition of anonymity. Ahmar Saeed is the other likely cricketer to get the job after doing a successful run in South Africa and in the home series against Australian Under-19.

The selectors also face a complex situation as Asia Cup is also round the corner and a couple of junior players, who can prove better if selected in the A team, have almost become essential for the Sri Lanka tour next month.

With only three league matches in the Asia Cup and an additional one if Pakistan qualify for the final, the selectors would be wise if they pick the youngsters for England where they would play three four-day `Tests', plus a few warm-up games. The slots in the senior string for the Asia Cup can be filed by players who have an experience of few seasons behind them and have also performed well in the domestic circuit. Those players may be Shahid Anwar, Basit Ali, Zahoor Elahi, Manzoor Akhtar, Sohail Jaffar, Mahmood Hamid, Mujahid Jamsheed, Ijaz Ahmad Junior, Shakeel Ahmad etc.

If the selectors adopt or follow that policy, it would help them in hitting two birds with one stone-acknowledging the domestic performances of cricketers by sending them to Sri Lanka, and maintaining the policy of continuity by giving more exposure to the budding youngsters by sending them to England.

The selectors have finalised a list of around 20 cricketers out of which the team is expected to be finalised:

Some of the players are: Mohammad Ramazan, Asif Mujtaba, Shadab Kabir, Rana Qayyumul Hasan, Salim Elahi, Mohammad Wasim, Farhan Adil, Hasan Raza, Ahmar Saeed, Javed Qadeer (wicketkeeper), Ali Husain Rizvi, Imran Tahir, Abdul Razzak, Fazl-i-Akbar, Waqas Ahmad, Shoaib Akhtar.

Source:: Dawn (https://dawn.com/)