LAHORE, July 16: Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Lt.Gen. Tauqir Zia declared that Moin Khan could be a possible candidate for captain but as Rashid Latif was doing a good job he did not deem it necessary to make any changes.
Answering questions at a press conference on Wednesday, Tauqir said that former skipper Imran Khan, who advised the PCB to select a new captain till 2007, had his own views on this subject.
“Yes, Imran is right but when Rashid is doing fine why should the PCB take up this matter. “We are searching for a captain, but if Rashid does well, he may be the captain for a long time”, the chairman said.
He admitted that Imran was a natural captain, but he sees no player in the current team has the same abilities.
He agreed that Moin was a natural captain, but until Rashid was in the team he (Moin) had no chance. “Rashid did a great job behind the wicket and except dropping Trescothick in the last one-dayer against England Rashid’s performance was fine”, the chairman observed.
The PCB chief created confusion when he denied that Waqar Younis was also offered to play his farewell match before home crowd. “Waqar has not announced his retirement as yet and he may be under consideration to get place in the team in future”, he said.
PCB chief executive Ramiz Raja in a recent press statement said that he offered Waqar a similar offer which had already been extended to Wasim.”As Waqar has yet to announce aretirement the PCB has not made him an offer to play a match at home ground”, Tauqir claimed
The chairman admitted that he had extended special treatment for paceman Shoaib Akhtar because he was extra-ordinary player. “Shoaib got permission for playing county cricket and will miss the next month home series against Bangladesh”.
Lack of communication between the PCB chief and chief selector Aamir Sohail was quite evident when he said that Abdul Razzaq was available for the home series against Bangladesh. Last week Aamir had stated that the allrounder was not available.
Commenting on the poor performance of vice-captain Yousaf Youhana, the chairman expressed his astonishment that all vice-captain in the recent past failed to click. “Inzamam-ul-Haq, Younis Khan and now Yousaf all met the the same fate and failed when named vice-captain” he said.
He said that the national selection committee had handed over the names of 40 students for the National Academy which would start functioning in the last week of this month pointing out that the National Academy team would tour South Africa from Aug 4.
The Pakistan Cricket Board boss said that all the teams would attend two-week training session in the National Academy before starting any home or foreign series.