** **Inzamam to decide about his future,
fitness himself: PCB chief
*By Waheed Khan
*KARACHI: Chairman Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) said on Tuesday while the Ad-hoc Committee had reposed faith in Inzamam-ul-Haq’s captaincy, it was now solely up to him to decide his future and lay special focus on his fitness and form.
“We’ve reposed confidence in his (Inzamam’s) captaincy as we feel he has done a good job with the team and the boys revolve around him. But his back problem is a cause of concern for us and it’s now entirely up to him how he goes about maintaining his fitness,” Shaharyar Khan told ‘The News’.
Last week, the Ad-hoc Committee, despite the one-day series loss to India, retained Inzamam as captain for the next 11 months.
But Shaharyar conceded that Inzamam would’ve to pay special attention to his fitness if he was going to last out till the 2007 World Cup. “Frankly speaking we are not worried about the one-day series loss to India; any team can go through a rough patch. And we’ve full confidence in Inzamam’s leadership; he has produced results and there is no doubt about his stature as a batsman. But his fitness is an issue and he himself realises it,” the PCB chief stated.
“We’ve reposed confidence in him and it’s now his call how he fulfils this confidence. He has already told us he’ll be working hard on his fitness before the Sri Lanka tour and get back into top shape. It’s a fact that coach Bob Woolmer has told us that Inzamam’s back problem flared up again because he was not doing the routine training exercises in the team and he has accepted this himself,” Shaharyar said.
Shaharyar, when asked if the captaincy would be an issue if the team failed to improve its form on next month’s Sri Lanka tour, said if the poor performances continued it was not an issue of just the captain but the entire team.
Shaharyar also dismissed reports that Inzamam had threatened to walk out of the team if his captaincy was not extended for a long period. “No, that is not factually correct; Inzamam has been very straight with us on this count. But yes the Ad-hoc Committee did discuss the future in view of his fitness problems and Inzamam himself has admitted he has to work hard on this aspect of his game.”
The PCB chief also stated candidly that while the option of having separate captains for the Tests and one-dayers had come up, he was not in favour of this experimentation. “I don’t support this viewpoint because I don’t think having separate captains will work in our particular cricket culture. Basically it’s now up to Inzamam how he plans out his future,” he said.
Shaharyar added he had spoken to Woolmer and discussed the option of using players on rotation basis so that most of them got rests in between matches and series in the lead up to the World Cup.
“The team is playing too much cricket these days and they tend to have fitness problems and get stale and that is something we’ve to look at. My feeling is that we need to rotate the players so that everybody gets proper rest,” the PCB chief said.
Inzamam has been captain since November 2003 and led the team in 19 Tests and some 62 One-day Internationals
Re: Inzamam to decide about his future,
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Re: Inzamam to decide about his future,
well,if he wants to play until next yr WC,he shud not play test matches
Re: Inzamam to decide about his future,
Or may be he should not play at all, till the WC.
Re: Inzamam to decide about his future,
The sooner he decided the better for future of Pakistan cricket.
Re: Inzamam to decide about his future,
He should play selected games. He is a very important part of our team and a real asset for the juniors. If he can stick around and help the juniors in the team to build a good skill set that would be awesome.
He should play an odd game in every series and domestic cricket to keem himself fit and try to get that back fixed...:)
Re: Inzamam to decide about his future,
Inziman is more fit than Shoaib, he only missed one full and one half test match and playing all 5 one days. In his age its nothing very unusual.
He should continue playing like his is and must not indulge in fitness thing. Its important for him that he play all games.
There is no doubt we need him to win worldcup.
Re: Inzamam to decide about his future,
inzi should play... just give him SL tour off or something, or even just tests off.
he was a mediocre ball chaser all his career... let him be in slips
its the public pressure after the series that has made him think this way... he broke records in year 2005 with similar size.