LAHORE: Around 26 cricketers, among them some undeserving and one of them banned, will appear in the last phase of trials to select players for the camp of emerging cricketers, here at the NCA on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Moin Khan-headed national selection committee conducted the Karachi and Rawalpindi leg of the trials -- surprisingly featuring many undeserving cricketers.

Making mockery of the affairs in Lahore, an U-19 cricketer Usama Mir, currently facing a one-year ban imposed by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), was also called up for the trials. The ban, to end in October this year, was imposed for violating PCB code of conduct as the player attempted to represent KRL in U-19 cricket for the fourth time, despite the fact that he had ended his quota of three stints by playing for Sialkot Region.

Moreover, one Noman Butt of Kasur was also invited at the trials, but to one’s utter amazement mainstream sporting circles have no concrete information regarding his cricket credentials.

If this was not enough, Multan’s Sudaif Mehdi, who featured in just one match for his region in the Quaid-i-Azam Trophy scoring mere six runs, also received an invitation to appear at the trials.

Similarly, Multan’s Zeeshan Ashraf, having a mediocre batting average of 32.10 has been preferred over the region’s second topper Abdul Rehman Muzammil, who averaged plus 50.

Waqar Hussain, also of Multan Region, earned the selectors’ call despite having scored just 210 runs with a poor average of 26.25.

Whereas relatively better performers like Kashif Naveed (440 runs, average 31.42) and Usman Liaquat (439, 31.35) failed to attract the selectors’ attention for the trials.

In another controversial case, Hamza Paracha of Lahore will also appear in the trials, despite collecting only 90 runs in four matches, while playing for the UBL, at an extremely poor batting average of 12.85.

In the Karachi leg of trials, 15 players were tested and among them Shazar Mohammad and Aqeel Anjum also appeared, having played for PIA and the NBP respectively in the 2013-14 President’s Trophy.

Their batting averages however are way too ordinary, to say the least. If Shazar holds a poor 15.86, Aqeel’s 2.5 he managed to obtain in a couple of matches is simply worthless.

Moreover, cricket circles remain clueless about the background of an individual named Mohammad Waqas, who appeared in Karachi trials. Ageing players like Tabish Khan (30 years) and Shaharyar Ghani (29) were also invited for the trials in Karachi.

Meanwhile, the Rawalpindi trials also concluded on Wednesday, where below-par performers like Ali Raza and Hasan Raza having represented Pakistan in the U-19 World Cup, were included.

Interestingly, PCB’s six-member national selection committee — the biggest in the country’s cricketing history — was naturally not expected to commit these many grave mistakes in selecting the probables.

Earlier, it was really frustrating to find the names of top performers of the last season missing from probables’ list for the aforementioned trials, announced on June 13.

And when Dawn highlighted these conspicuous omissions, the PCB covered up the matter by claiming that all top performers had earned automatic selection for main round of the camp for the emerging players; therefore, they were not called up for the initial trials. However, for reasons best known to the PCB, the names of those players have not been made public so far.

Meanwhile, several attempts were made to contact chief selector Moin Khan to get his version on the selection anomalies in the trials but to no avail.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2014