KARACHI: Former first-class cricketer and women’s coach Adnan Jamal has called for induction of budding young talent in the series against visiting Bangladesh team for grooming more women international players for future.

“Inclusion of some new top performing women players will help in strengthening and expanding the pool of players in the national women’s team,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

This was the right time for Pakistan team to introduce new players, Adnan insisted.

Bangladesh women’s team, a relatively weak outfit, is due to arrive here in the early hours of Sept 27 to play a series of three One-day Internationals and as many Twenty20 Internationals against Pakistan in Karachi and Lahore.

Opening Twenty20 International will be played here at the Southend Club Ground in Defence on Sept 29 and second on Oct 1.

Pakistan defeated Bangladesh after a nailing-biting final in the Incheon Asian Games last year.

Adnan expressed hope that one-man selection committee of Farrukh Zaman will make a fair selection for the BD series.

He, however, alleged that Pakistan women’s team was making slow progress because selection process was not transparent as only one-man committee was selecting the team which was a joke.

Adnan alleged that several senior players of Pakistan’s women team were occupying places despite giving inconsistent performance in international cricket.

He was of the view that Asmavia Iqbal or Bismah Maroof should be tried as the new captain in place of Sana Mir.

Adnan alleged due to complete command and control of Sana on the team matters, highly-talented off-spinner Nida Dar and some players were being wasted and sidelined. “Nida is very talented off-break bowler but captain Sana is not using her fairly,” he regretted.

He once again appealed to PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan for increasing the number of selection committee members to at least three.

He praised PCB’s effort which paved the way for Bangladesh women team’s visit to Pakistan and hoped that the PCB would continue to invite foreign women teams to Pakistan, an approach he said could help remove the foreign teams’ security concerns.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2015

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