Players’ fitness keep selectors busy
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LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board is waiting for medical reports of fast bowler Wahab Riaz to decide whether or not to select him for Sri Lanka ODIs while Haris Sohail and Sohaib Maqsood have already been ruled out of the series on fitness grounds.
The PCB selection committee will announce the squad in the next couple of days.
Fitness issues of Pakistan players have been growing since the last one year and currently four players are struggling to recover.
Another pacer Mohammad Irfan got fitness certificate recently after missing some matches of this year’s World Cup and then the entire back-to-back series against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.
He is likely to get selected in the Pakistan squad which will strengthen its pace attack. The lanky pacer is attending practice sessions at the National Cricket Academy.
Sources told Dawn that Haris, who suffered injuries in the ongoing Test series against Sri Lanka, has been ruled out of the ODI series while Wahab’s medical report is awaited.
After receiving Wahab’s reports, the selection committee will be in a position to announce the ODI squad.
The selectors, the sources said, were also worried over lack of effective off-spinner as Mohammad Hafeez’s bowling had been reported again during the current Test series.
The selectors are looking for a spinner but except domestic cricketer Bilal Asif they are not rating anyone worthy of selection.
“We have few off-spinners, most of them with suspect bowling actions, and if we fail to get Hafeez back, we will have no other option but to test a new one Bilal Asif,” a selector told Dawn.
Meanwhile, it seems the selectors have ignored middle-order batsman Umar Akmal as he could not win back his place in the national team after the 2015 World Cup.
Umar and Ahmed Shehzad were dropped from the team due to attitude problem at the mega event.
While Shehzad staged a comeback in all the three formats of the game, Umar is still in wilderness.
The junior Akmal has left for the Caribbeans to play their league after finding out he was not on the selectors’ radar.
The series against Sri Lanka is important for Pakistan as they have to win it to brighten their chances of qualifying for the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy.
Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2015
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