Team management talks to Saqlain about his future

Entertainment Cricket and Other Sports
1

Team management talks to Saqlain about his future

From Waheed Khan

TANGIER: The Pakistan team management has had a long discussion with Saqlain Mushtaq here on Thursday with particular reference to his future commitments for the national team. Pakistan cricket team sources said that manager Yawar Saeed, coach Mudassar Nazar and captain Waqar Younis had sat down with Saqlain and had a long conversation with him pointing out to him that he was presently going through a bad patch and needed to concentrate on his cricket keeping in mind the future commitments of the national team.

Saqlain, a senior member of the touring squad, has been adamant that he be released after this tournament so that he can fly back to London to be with his wife who is expecting at the end of the month. This would mean that he’d miss the triangular series in Nairobi, Kenya, against Australia and Kenya scheduled from August 29.

The problem is that the team management strongly believes that the off-spinner who has an impressive ODI career record of 271 wickets in 156 matches till now needs to seriously concentrate on his game as he is not the same bowler as he was in the past. Since the England tour last year, the 26-year old has managed just 21 wickets in 18 One-day Internationals, a clear indication of the decline in his bowling form.

“Saqlain has been off-form for some time now and he needs to get back to concentrating on his game. The truth is at the moment he is not an automatic selection in the eleven and could face problems being selected for the coming matches,” one source disclosed. According to him the management had also been unhappy with Saqlain’s attitude in the dressing room where he had repeatedly said that if Pakistan didn’t want him he would like to concentrate on his career with Surrey in England.

Saqlain went for 80 runs against South Africa in the first match and that is his worst ever bowling performance for Pakistan. His previous worst was none for 72 in 10 overs against Sri Lanka in the Independence Cup in India in the 1996-97 season. Saqlain was dropped for the second match against Sri Lanka here and replaced by Muhammad Sami.

The source said that with Shoaib Malik coming up well as an off-spinning all-rounder and with two One-day International hundreds under his belt, Saqlain requires to think about his level of commitment to the national team as his place in the team could be under threat and he is no longer an automatic choice of the coach and captain.

Yawar Saeed was expected to officially confirm here later on Thursday if Saqlain is going to be released for the Nairobi triangular. On Wednesday he told reporters that if Saqlain decided not to go to Nairobi then he would be automatically replaced by Shoaib Akhtar, who is set to make a comeback to the team.

However Yawar said if Saqlain remained with the team and with Shoaib also coming back, a decision would be made on which player should be sent back home after the tournament here. The likely choice appears to be the reserve batsman Misbah-ul-Haq as for a triangular series Pakistan appears to have a lot of depth in the batting in the presence of all-rounders like Shoaib Malik, Shahid Afridi, Azhar Mahmood and Abdur Razzaq.

2

i think saqlain has stopped flighting the ball as much as he used to. now he comes in and bowls flat. whereas before he used to give the ball a lot more air and flight it.

3

I think he just needs more time playing with the team...
the pakistani team is not getting their fair share of games with all the cancelations...
He plays more county then he does for the team in a year...

4

every player goes thru a bad pathc in his career....
i think saqi needs to concenrate more....
but lets not overlook the fact that he has not been selected cinsistently for the pak team in the recent times and perhaps the discerete appearances have affected his performance....
i think he shud be allowed to play a continous string of 5-10 games and he will be back on track (i hope so)....

5

Saqlain Out Of Squad..Ur Opinion?

hi guppies,

As team for the tri-nation cup in Kiniya and ICC trophy is announced,and Saqlain is not there..i guess in ICC trophy there will be spin bcoz its in srilanka and they do have spinning tracks..what do u think is it a good decision?

6

Saqi is going through a bad patch. This would not do his confidence any good. Even if he does not play, he should be in the squad (imho). Once he starts flighting the ball again, he will prove a match winner. I hope he is back to his best for the Worls Cup.

7

there's no place for prima donnas in the Pakistan national team. He supposedly wanted to be told whether he was needed or not so that he could concentrate on his career with Surrey.

Saqi read my lips, go play for Surrey.

8

Agreed :k:

9

He's just not included because he requested not to be.
His wife is expecting, thus will be unable to attend.

10

just saw the PAK teams for sri lanka (ICC Trophy) and Kenya series....
saqi is missing from both of them....
almost the best spinner of the game and been thrown out like this!!!!
in his good days, saqlain was better than murali and warne....
he has been very poor in the last year or so but he still deserves a chance....
i hope they bring him back....
we dont have any spinner of his quality in pakistan so far....

11

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by sambrialian: *

Saqi read my lips, go play for Surrey.
[/QUOTE]

Abbay if you want to use the same throughy than you should do the samething to Razzaq, Wasim, Waqar, Shoaib.
Why just poor saqi.

I am surprised that he was left out of the ICC Knockout Tournament squad, we defintaely need spinners over there.

12

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by sambrialian: *
there's no place for prima donnas in the Pakistan national team. He supposedly wanted to be told whether he was needed or not so that he could concentrate on his career with Surrey.

Saqi read my lips, go play for Surrey.
[/QUOTE]

oh and who is included in his place ???? SHOAIB AKHTER ??? biggest "i-play-for-money" player of Pakistan ??? Why not kick him out before anyone else ??

and Saqlain was not dropped coz of this performance. His wife is expecting during the period of Kenya tournment so he asked board to release him for that. He is not out of ICC team. True that he is not in good form these days but with his credential he is still an automatic selection specially in absence of another good and experienced spinner .

13

He needs to get in form and he will back in business.
He was dropped due to poor performance in just one match but Waqar gave 70+ runs each in 2 different matches.
The guy had a bad game and what do we do we drop him.
He will be very useful in Srilanka as we don't have a turning spin bowler and Saqi will be important.

14

This really is pathetic. he is such a good spinner. i think they are being biased against him. just punishing him maybe for playing county?? i mean he would've been an automatic choice for anyother team. come on guys. just because he gave away 80 runs in one match doesn't mean u throw him in the doldrums. I hope he comes back strongly. we really need him for the world cup.
i mean come on. shahid afridi is a repeated failure with the bat, yet u still persist with him. and u drop a world-class spinner just because he gave away a lot of runs in the first match. well waqar gave 76 runs in the second match. what do u have to say against that????

15

*Off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq, however, was not considered for the events in Nairobi and Colombo at his own request for family reasons. *

that's what it says.

16

The Game Responds:

         *Gotta agree with Deewana Tera; all he needs is more flight in his spells, and the improvement will be there to watch. People, That Is All.*
17

Very bad. He should have been in the side

18

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Xpress: *

Abbay if you want to use the same throughy than you should do the samething to Razzaq, Wasim, Waqar, Shoaib.
Why just poor saqi.

[/QUOTE]

I find it extremely annoying when people make assumptions about my opinions. Umair please dig out the thread on Shoaib that I posted. The last article that I posted there was about Waqar teaching Shoaib about commitment. And I commented that a lesson on burnout, commitment and blah blah is rich coming from Waqar a bowler who killed his own career prematurely for some extra pounds. Same goes for Wasim. Please, try to find out what I think rather than make wrong assumptions.

[QUOTE]
*oh and who is included in his place ???? SHOAIB AKHTER ??? biggest "i-play-for-money" player of Pakistan ??? Why not kick him out before anyone else ??

and Saqlain was not dropped coz of this performance. His wife is expecting during the period of Kenya tournment so he asked board to release him for that. He is not out of ICC team. True that he is not in good form these days but with his credential he is still an automatic selection specially in absence of another good and experienced spinner . *
[/QUOTE]

Same goes for you NW. I strongly resent Shaoaib's attitude and I'm sure people have seen me voice the same on this forum. I have openly said that if I were given the authority Shoaib would not be in the team no matter how fast he is or was.

I would not have dropped Saqlain for his performance. I was very disappointed in him because it is quite obvious that it was a lack of effort and concentration that resulted in his horrible bowling performance. But he's a champion bowler. His attitude leaves a LOT to be desired though.

And one last thing for all the people who accused me on being partial and too hard on Saqi and letting go of the W's, Shoaib and other county cowboys, please note I wrote "prima donna*s*" not prima donna. We don't need anyone with a bloated ego even if it was Wasim himself.

I hope I've made myself clear. I'm strictly against any player taking time off to play for counties while the national team suffers and I've said that at least ten times here.

19

I apologize

I think PCB should have a say in Pakistani players going to county cricket.

PCB should have punished Razzaq and Saqlain for going to England while Pakistan was playing in Australia.

Same goes for Shoaib Akhtar being punished for skipping this tournament.

The punishment should be harsh so no player even thinks about playing county cricket during the Pakistani international season.

20

he has 11 of the 18 wickets to fall of the opposition now that he is back in surrey....

i guess saqlain just doest want to play for pak any more :(