Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
But then ehsan, would you find a bigger fisher than Yasir Hameed???
Salman Butt averages 60 against England and 37.5 against Australia in Australia.
Talking about confidence, do you have more confidence in Malik,Hameed or Taufeeq as openers????
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
^ i am not advocating Yasir Hameed's return. I suppose we will have to continue our Malik, Farhat experiment for a little while longer. Let's see what happens. Who knows Salman might have worked on his weakness and surprise us all. He will become a great and regular opener for Pakistan if he can overcome his weakness, otherwise I am afraid it will be curtains for him at International level.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
I agree with Imran Farhat (he needs some more chances) but when you compare Malik and Salman Butt, we can look at their performances against same English bowling attack playing in same conditions.
Salman Butt : 74, 122,26,58,28
Shoaib Malik: 39,18,27,26,0
I have much more confidence in Salman Butt than Shoaib Malik, he just had one bad series and he was dropped against SriLanka and before the Indian series, everyone was saying that we have found one opener, just need to find his partner and the poor guy gets dropped after only one bad series.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
I am not a big fan of Malik in test matches however it doesn't really matter what people think about him.
The bottom line is that Woolmer and Inzamam has faith in him and I think Malik will be a part of playing 11 for the first test. Farhat will be playing along with him.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
hey poeple although i am afridi fan, he did not play well in the india-pakistan match in dubai
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
and as well His failure however, lies in his inability to curb his instinctive aggression when the situation so demands. The need for patience to survive against the 'good' ball and the art of playing according to the situation, for the sake of the team, do not ever seem necessary to Afridi
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
Pakistan would be taking a bowling attack to England dominated by pacers. Shoaib Akhtar has already announced that he is fit and should head the pack of fast bowlers in the list. Muhammad Sami is also in the running to make a comeback in the 16-member squad. Muhammad Asif, with his impressive outings in recent months, is certain to make the line-up. And then there are Rana Naved-ul-Hassan, Umar Gul and Rao Iftikhar Anjum.
The fact that the selectors are considering to have more and more reliable batters in the touring side has brightened up the chances of discarded middle-order batsman Asim Kamal’s chances of getting a recall for the English sojourn. “Asim is very much under consideration for the tour of England but just for the Test squad,” confirmed Bari.
The inclusion of an extra wicket-keeper is always good. Certainly don’t want to leave Akmal hanging high and dry all by himself.
This is one of the rarest ocassions where I am strongly vouching for Mohammad Sami’s presence in the team. He would be one of my first front-line bowling-attack choices to play on those seaming wickets. Umar Gul must be looked as another option. Iftikhar, on the other hand, should be shot from a cannon from a point-blank range.
The statement “a third specialist opener for the tour”…who are our first two options again?
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
I think we know who are the specialist openers 
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
1 - Imran Farhat
2 - Kamran Akmal
3 - Younas Khan
4 - Inzamam-ul-Haq
5 - Yousaf Youhana
6 - Asim Kamal
7 - Shahid Afridi
8 - Rana Naveed
9 - Shoaib Akhtar
10 - Muhammad Asif
11 - Danish Kaneria
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
My squad of 16
1 - Imran Farhat
2 - Salman Butt
3 - Shoaib Malik
4 - Younis Khan
5 - Inzamam-ul-Haq
6 - Yousaf Youhana
7 - Asim Kamal
8 - Shahid Afridi
9 - Rana Naveed
10 - Shoaib Akhtar
11 - Muhammad Asif
12 - Danish Kaneria
13 - Abdul Razzaq
14 - Mohammad Sami
15- Faisal Iqbal
16- Kamran Akmal
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
Salman Butt has NEVER played in England so i am not sure how he will perform there but only Australian and South African pitches come close and he has done reasonable well there, scored a solid 70+ and a 100 against Mcgrath, Gillespie and Warne. He also scored a century in an ODI in South Africa and scored a dounble hundred when he went to play against SA Academy team. His focus is his main strength, he is edgy because of the way he plays his drives, slashes very hard at the ball.
Agree 100%. A lot of players have some sort of weakness and Salman Butt is no different. Yes its true that his weakness is easily exposed and offers fielding practice to the opposition. However this is something which he can work on in order to overcome his problem.
Like you stated above, a young batsmen playing in Australia and getting a 70+ 100 does indicate that he is a batsman of immense talent and can play against different kind of bowlers and wickets. Yes he is inconsistent but he will get better as he gains more experience and learns from his mistake.
Please do not tell me or convince me the likes of Farhat and Hameed are any better then him. In fact Farhat played in the same series against Australia and the way he was exposed and got out.
Yaseer Hammed when he first came on the scene and got those hundreds against the mighty Bangladesh - people got so excited that he was regarded as the saviour of Pakistab batting until he played against the big boys where his technique has been exposed big time.
So Yes to Butt but no to Farhat and Hameed (in the starting X1). However I think both of them should be included in the touring party simply as backups incase someone gets injured and there are no other good enough batsmen available at present.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
I don't think there will be curtains for Butt for the time being. When the likes of Farhat are out of the team we assume that this is the end of their international careers. However when someone is out of form they are re-called back to the team. How many times have we seen tried and tested players been re-called to the team, therefore until we find a opener good enough for international cricket I don't think there will be curtains for any of them as yet.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
Yes you are right. Can someone please please explain to me how the hell does he get into the squad? There may be few occasions that some players are not available due to injury and you need to include your backup bowlers in the first team. So why him, whats so special about him?
He is another one I hope is not taken to England on a holiday. Big NO to him.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
i have personally never seen him bowl , may be i do have, but dont recognise him as such. but i heard a lot about him, expected to be a good bowler. can be tried in any of side match, as inzis is planning to apply rotation policy. may be the selectors will pick him…:halo:
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
Above written pretty much echoed thoughts from my side as well (Three paragraphs devoted to Salman Butt).
Rock_Express Bhai, you indicated that the duo of Farhat/Hameed should be included in the touring party as backups (largely due to their International level experience). Who would you pick as another specialist to open with Salman? Judging from one of your recent posts, I am taking you are high on having Asim Kamal take another shot in the batters lot?
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
Sorry Dhobi_Bhai it’s my mistake what I meant to state was that both of them I think will be selected in the squad to tour England. Again if better options were available then both wouldn’t be anywhere near the team.
There are no other specialist openers available other then Butt & Farhat. Would you regard Hameed as a specialist opener or someone who is really a middle order batsman but has opened previously?
If either of them fails in the series then why don’t we try Asim Kamal as an opener, as everything else seems to have been tried.
So what about the likes of future superstars of Pakistan cricket Bazid Khan and Faisal Iqbal? What do you make of them and should they be included in the squad or not?
After the world cup some players may retire (Inzi for sure) and others may be kicked out and therefore allow the chance to such players with family connections to get into the side. How exciting is it going to be watching these players bat.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
There are no other specialist openers available other then Butt & Farhat. Would you regard Hameed as a specialist opener or someone who is really a middle order batsman but has opened previously?
If either of them fails in the series then why don’t we try Asim Kamal as an opener, as everything else seems to have been tried.
So what about the likes of future superstars of Pakistan cricket Bazid Khan and Faisal Iqbal? What do you make of them and should they be included in the squad or not?
After the world cup some players may retire (Inzi for sure) and others may be kicked out and therefore allow the chance to such players with family connections to get into the side. How exciting is it going to be watching these players bat.
Regarding the selection of Asim Kamal as a possible option for tryout, I would definitely opt for it. There's no harm in at least providing him on a surface to play on and see what amenities he has in store for us. Instead of going the regular route of Butt/Farhat/Hameed, I would include Kamal for the first two practice matches against Leicestershire and England A, respectively (before the actual tour is underway). In any case, he should definitely make the final 16-cut in the touring party.
Faisal Iqbal - I am very keen on him getting a permanent slot in our team, but given the above circumstances (Post-World Cup retirees, as you indicated), and from the looks of it, he is simply bound to get limited opportunities, a few here and a few there, and that is to the extent of it. It would be quite hard to accomodate him in the middle-order with the big guns being Younis, Yousuf and Inzamam. One of them will be replaced in the near future, and Iqbal is just the ideal man on the scenes at present.
As far as Bazid Khan, I would rather have a tried-and-tested winning formula combination (with a few speedbumps along the way), rather than bringing in someone totally new to the International scene. If PCB was really keen on having Bazid (or any other domestic player) take a go at it, they would have included him in the Sri-Lankan bound squad last month (or better yet, in the Abu Dhabi tamasha matches, since it served literally no purpose in playing a full-strength squad). As a matter of fact, they did actually include two individuals, Tahir Khan and Abdul Rehman, for them to get a feel of the real-world experience, but they were sent back to make room for the almighty finger-spinner-artist Arshad Khan in the team.
Re: pick your Pakistan team for the 1st test against England this summer
Isn’t this what we are seeing right now? No need to wait after the World Cup to see the chamcha-geeri in full effect. That third-class garbage bag Iftikhar is a lively proof of it. I don’t even think shooting him from a cannon from a point-blank range will do him justice, the player of his caliber. PCB will declare a National Holiday and we will hear things like “OMG!@!~~ROFLCOPTER ^.^ VEE WAANNTT DBLL SAREES…SALAREES”, not to mention the recent Inzamam’s catchphrases of “player burnout” and “rotation policy” (with them playing tamasha matches with Bharat on their days-off). On top of it, Waheed Khan will go berserk on another one of his regular field trips, and the weekly sales for The News will be blown out of proportion.
When the likes of Waheed Khan become the main-selling point on behalf of their newspapers, that is a bad, bad sign for Pakistan economy.