LAHORE: The Pakistan squad has been announced for the series of five One-day Internationals against South Africa.
Addressing a press conference at the Gaddafi Stadium, chairman national selection committee Salahuddin Sallu announced the 15-member squad.
He said that the team has been announced for the first three One-day Internationals.
The final team for the three ODIs against South Africa would be selected from the squad comprised of the following players:
Salman Butt, Muhammad Hafeez, Imran Nazir, Younus Khan, Shahid Afridi, Muhammad Yousuf, Yasir Hameed, Shoaib Malik, Misbah-ul-Haq, Kamran Akmal, Umar Gul, Rao Iftikhar Anjum, Sohail Tanveer, Abddul Rehman and Muhammad Asif.
No Yasir Arafat...PCB named all these young guys in the Patron's Eleven yet they dont get a chance to be considered for the first 3 ODIs. That does not make sense at all... What about Asif's fitness? Thought he was injured but here he is named. The dilemma is who will open?
Guys who follow domestic cricket, do we have any other good opener, other than tested & proven craps like SALMAN BUTT, IMRAN NAZIR, YASIR HAMEED and TAUFEEQ UMER? in ANY first class team?
People in Pakistan don't know how to use this gem. He has the perfect eye-hand coordination and timing that is second to Viv R.
You are making me laugh. However I would prefer Imran Farhat, on many other openers. This guy gets lucky many many times. I dont know if its just luck that he gets away with many wrong shots, that other get out on. He should be kept in the team, unless and until they find a better opener. Infact Imran Nazir and Imran Farhat should open. On any odd day, they will beat the crap out of bowlers. For all other days, they will be as ordinary as Taufeeq.
Guys who follow domestic cricket, do we have any other good opener, other than tested & proven craps like SALMAN BUTT, IMRAN NAZIR, YASIR HAMEED and TAUFEEQ UMER? in ANY first class team?
Imran Nazir is okay yaar. He should play in one dayers for sure.
Other than that Khurram manzoor and Khalid Latif are making visible contributions in domestic scenes so two good batsmen for the future.
There is this 16 year old opener playing for Pak U19. His name is Ahmed Shahzad. He is being highly spoken off. He was even included in PCBXI facing SA. He had an amazing Aus U19 tour and scored 115, 49, 30* and 99*. He also had a good tour of EngU19 where he scored 187. Inshallah if all goes well he might be a future prospect for pakistan.
Guys who follow domestic cricket, do we have any other good opener, other than tested & proven craps like SALMAN BUTT, IMRAN NAZIR, YASIR HAMEED and TAUFEEQ UMER? in ANY first class team?
Yasir Hameed is pretty good. He averages over 38.44 in 53 ODIs but for some reason PCB hasn't given him much chance lately. He scored 2 centuries against Australia A recently. I would really want him to be in the playing eleven.
U name this guy in same sentence as VVS (and no i’m not an Indian) … i guess u’ve seen matches where he performed, most of us either missed or ignored on purpose
I am basically fed up of these "perform in patches" openers. No one is consistent and I am talking about both TEST and ODI games. These openers fail for 5 games and perform in 6th to secure their spot once again !
^ Hameed is still the same player and will always be. A lot of people talk very highly of him, but he is not anything special. His stats don't tell the whole story, because he did really well at the start of his career, and he always tries driving the ball and he was a given a chance in the SA series before the WC, and he failed miserbly on the swinging and bouncy pitches.
