Such are the times when major absentism causes new blood to come forward
and prove their metal in the mainstream.
Shoby ruled out for at least couple of months with stress fracture.
Afridi ruled out for at least 3weeks or so.
Inzi might go ahead with his knee surgery and should be out for 2 months + if he goes ahead with it.
Here the opportunity knocks for the youngsters to make a name and the game in the national team.
Yasir Arafart
Faisal Iqbal
Yasir Hameed
Asif Mohammad etc are waiting in the wings to establish their positions, later being the latest re-entry with a bang!
Faisal Iqbal, Yasir Hameed have been given a good number of chances before, Yasir did capitalize in early part and then faded out with occasional bright shine. Faisal when given a decent run was part of the squad which was almost devoid of any senior batsmen. So it'll be basically a second life for these two.
I would go for either Faisal Iqbal or Imran Farhat. A bowler will not cut it at this point. Let Danish/Sami sit out in the dressing room, and provide chances to those who deserve to be inducted the second time around, or need opportunities such as these to shine their name(s), once again, in the limelight.
^^ Yasir again is more or less a makeshift opener. He opened for Pakistan cause they couldnt squeeze him in the middle order. He is a middle order batsman and we need to find an opener who can combat the movement of the new ball without trying to play at 2 RPO. Salman Butt has consistency issues, he has immensly talented their is no doubt but he needs to start coming good on a more regular basis. Maybe Taufeeq Umar can also be tried to see if he has learned from his past mistakes. Otherwise we would go int othe WC yet again without a proper opener and try to make it through with makeshift options. We need a regular opening pair, period. Make shift crap is a short term solution. We need a long term solution now, I think its about time.
--------------cvabn------------------
I was the one who was holding the Pitcher full of Holly Water when thou were
stark naked helpless in the bird-bath basin, :k:
he has played wonderfully in ODIs, I agree he is no Shahid Afridi, Sehwag type opener but he is very fine opener (with weaknesses off course).
:k:
lol