The intellectual bankruptcy of Pakistan's cricket selection strategy

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published March 02, 2025 at 02:33 pm |  Dr. Nauman Niaz (TI)

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The invocation of inexperience as a defense collapses under even the gentlest scrutiny. The history of Pakistan cricket is littered with players thrown into the hard end of international tournaments and series with neither experience nor political sponsorship to cushion their fall. The defiant brilliance of newcomers shaped the ICC tournaments in the past. Wasim Akram in 1985, Aaqib Javed himself in 1992, Mohammad Amir in 2009, and Fakhar Zaman in 2017, all found themselves not insulated by experience, but liberated by its absence. To suggest that Pakistan’s struggles stem from inexperience is not merely revisionist, it is intellectually disingenuous, the argument of a man incapable of self-reflection, who clings to ‘inexperience’ as a buffer to obscure his inadequacy.

The imbalance within the squad was not accidental; it was systemic, as it seemed. It was the inevitable consequence of selectors who view cricket not as a science nor an art, but as an extension of patronage networks and personal alliances. It is a selection process governed not by performance or potential, but by political expedience, personal favors, and a cultural aversion to merit. The result was a squad simultaneously fragile and bloated, a collection of mismatched parts masquerading as a team, unified only by their collective quintessence of Pakistani cricket’s selection pathology.

Individual Brilliance And Collective Purpose

The philosophical underpinning of any successful cricket team lies in the delicate harmony between individual brilliance and collective purpose. Yet in Pakistan’s case, both these pillars are desecrated. Individuals are either over-promoted through franchise hype or discarded after a single perceived failure. The collective is never allowed to form, constantly fractured by arbitrary changes, selection caprice, and the utter absence of long-term vision. This team, therefore, is not the product of strategy, but of survival, an improvised squad thrown together by men who lack the intellectual framework to understand the game they are entrusted to govern.

To cloak this intellectual destitution in the language of ‘inexperience' is to mock both history and logic. This is not inexperience; this is incompetence elevated to the level of ideology, a selection policy that does not only tolerate failure but protects it as the organizing principle of Pakistan cricket. And so, the tragedy is complete, not because Pakistan lacks talent, nor because it lacks resources, but because it lacks the intellectual courage to confront its pathologies. The Champions Trophy 2025 squad was just the latest, most discourteous expression of this failure, a monument to selectorial spinelessness, initiated upon the ashes of Pakistan’s once-proud cricketing tradition.

In the end, the greatest crime is not the imbalance of the squad, nor the exclusion of superior talent. It is the deliberate assassination of merit, the wilful rejection of logic, and the institutionalization of mediocrity disguised as strategy. That is the true scandal, and that is why Pakistan cricket remains not on the track to glory, but to oblivion.

The Anatomy of Dysfunction: Champions Trophy Selection Farce

There exists a peculiar pathology within Pakistan cricket, a congenital inability to learn from the wreckage of its own making. As the national selectors unveiled the squad for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025, it became painfully apparent that the selection process was not the product of deep contemplation, meticulous scrutiny, or even the most rudimentary strategic foresight. It was, instead, a slapdash exercise in personal appeasement, internal politicking, and the preservation of certain ‘sacred cows’ whose utility expired long ago.

The squad, an anatomical oddity masquerading as a cricket team, evinced the hallmarks of reflective incompetence. To enter an international tournament, a multi-team cauldron where adaptability is king, with a solitary specialist spinner is not only negligent; it was an open confession that Pakistan’s selection committee lacked even the most rudimentary understanding of modern white-ball cricket. The very essence of limited-overs cricket hinges upon versatility, the capacity to exploit changing conditions, and the wisdom to structure a bowling attack that could evolve across surfaces. Yet here was Pakistan, armed with the spartan comfort of one solitary spinner, as though we were trapped in the early 1990s.

And what of the opening combination? It was a tale so farcical that it could comfortably sit within the pages of Wodehouse. Having discarded a seasoned opener not for lack of form but for having left some of the PCB officials infuriated having spoken the truth in a meeting. The selectors dusted him off, hurled him into the furnace, and expected him to flourish in alien conditions, without any recalibration, continuity, or logic. One opener does not make a pair, just as one organ does not make a symphony, yet the selectors considered this glaring imbalance an acceptable compromise.

Middle Order Festival of Mediocrity

The middle order was a festival of mediocrity, peopled by the untested, the uninspired, and the unready. There was no discernible plan, no philosophical throughline connecting their presence in the squad to any overarching tactical vision. Selection, it seems, is no longer the pursuit of a coherent XI, but rather an exercise in ticking arbitrary boxes, satisfying provincial or personal quotas, and selecting players who possess the right patrons rather than the right talents.

It was within this murky, cynical reality that the team embarked upon its pre-tournament campaign, slaughtered mercilessly by New Zealand, and dismantled with clinical ease by India. Yet, in the aftermath of these humiliations, what surfaced from the mouths of Pakistan’s administrators was not introspection, but self-congratulation. They declared, with a misplaced arrogance bordering on the surreal, that this was the highest quality team Pakistan could assemble, a proclamation so detached from reality that it invites comparisons not to competent cricket boards, but to Orwellian doublespeak.

But the crime here is not the misidentification of player ‘quality’. Quality, in isolation, is meaningless. Cricket is not a science fair project where you select individually brilliant specimens and hope they fuse into coherence. It is a symphonic endeavor, a balancing act where skills must dovetail, strengths must offset weaknesses, and above all, the unit must be greater than the sum of its parts. Instead, Pakistan’s selectors produced a grotesque Frankenstein monster, bowlers who duplicated each other’s skills, batsmen who competed for the same roles, and gaping holes in the team’s basic architecture.

Where was the foresight?

Where was the understanding that in modern white-ball cricket, a complete bowling attack is a needlepoint, seamers, spinners, wrist and finger spin, swing, pace, and deception intertwined into a cohesive threat? Where was the acknowledgment that a middle order cannot survive on reputation, but requires players schooled in pressure, versatile against spin and seam alike, capable of finishing innings with power and invention? These are not esoteric concepts, they are the first principles of elite cricket, principles too advanced for Pakistan’s panel of selectors.

The bitter truth, unsparing in its simplicity, is this: it was never just a matter of the quality of the players chosen, but the absence of structure, foresight, and balance. The best players in the world, thrown into a dysfunctional combination, will falter. A team with one spinner, an incomplete opening pair, and a haphazard middle order was not the best available team, it was a suicide note written in squad form.

To watch the Pakistan team of ICC Champions Trophy 2025 was to witness a thoughtful philosophical collapse, the erosion of cricketing logic under the weight of personal agenda and institutional rot. And until selection is restored as an intellectual quest grounded in philosophy, data, adaptability, and clarity of purpose, Pakistan will continue to wander the wilderness, blaming players, conditions, and fate, while the true malignancy festers at home. The selectors, architects of this abomination, deserve neither sympathy nor patience. They deserve only exposure for it is their ineptitude, their pusillanimity, and their doubtful intellectuality.

Pakistan’s selection history is a catalog of confusion, political interference, provincialism, and tactical illiteracy. Some of the worst squads include:

1996 World Cup (quarter-final squad vs India)

• A hobbled and unfit Wasim Akram withdrawn on the eve of the game, raising suspicions of rifts and poor medical management. In the background were allegations of match-fixing. Aamer Sohail, the vice-captain at the last moment was compelled to captain Pakistan instead.
• An unbalanced attack heavily reliant on pace with no frontline spinner, ignoring the subcontinental conditions.

2003 World Cup Squad

• A chaotic blend of the aging and the unprepared.
• Players like Saeed Anwar, even the captain Waqar Younis, and Wasim Akram were well past their peak.
• Selections like Shahid Afridi (picked on reputation rather than form) and inexplicable exclusions of in-form domestic talent.

2015 World Cup Squad

• Zero foresight for modern one-day cricket.
• Absence of power hitters, relying on a fragile middle order and half-fit bowlers.
• The squad had only one spinner, Yasir Shah, who was later ruled out and replaced by Nasir Jamshed, a batsman who had been in free fall for two years.

2021 T20 World Cup Squad

• Shoaib Malik recalled out of desperation, Mohammad Hafeez retained without any notable recent performances.
• Imad Wasim played despite his limitations against top teams.
• Babar Azam’s conservative powerplay approach is compounded by no explosive batting depth.

2022 T20 World Cup (finalists, but structurally flawed)

• Weak middle order with Iftikhar Ahmed and Asif Ali, who lacked both consistency and tactical adaptability.
• One-dimensional pace attack, with no versatile seamers to exploit Australian conditions. And half-fit, prematurely re-introduced Shaheen Shah Afridi after injury

Scathing Critique of Pakistan's 2024 T20 World Cup Squad

The 2024 T20 World Cup squad was a masterclass in incompetence, reflecting Pakistan’s addiction to individual reputation over systemic thinking. Selection blunders included:

• Persisting with underperformers like Iftikhar Ahmed and Shadab Khan, neither of whom had credible recent T20 numbers in top leagues.
• Ignoring spin depth entirely despite the tournament being held in the West Indies, where spinners historically play key roles.
• An unsettled opening pair with Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan adhering to outdated anchor roles, resulting in pedestrian powerplays.
• No specialist finisher, forcing players like Fakhar Zaman into uncomfortable roles.
• Absence of an all-round seam option with death bowling credentials, even though Aamer Jamal had demonstrated it domestically.
• Selection of Usman Khan, a return of Imad Wasim and Mohammad Aamir from the absolute wilderness.
• Azam Khan was picked as a power hitter and then dropped after one match.

The philosophical rot was evident, Pakistan was selecting players for who they were, not who they had become. Loyalty over logic, nostalgia over necessity.

Dr. Nauman Niaz is the Sports Editor at JournalismPakistan.com. He is a civil award winner (Tamagha-i-Imtiaz) in Sports Broadcasting and Journalism and a regular cricket correspondent, covering 54 tours and three ICC World Cups. He has written over 3500 articles, authored 14 books, and is the official historian of Pakistan cricket (Fluctuating Fortunes IV Volumes – 2005). His signature show, Game On Hai, has received the highest ratings and acclaim.