The New Zealand team of Pakistan is a Russian mountain – surprise captain, shock omissions and classic selection chaos.
The Pakistani cricket never fails to surprise – or rather shock – its fans. The team’s last announcement for the next New Zealand tour is no exception.
In the real Pakistani style, he is filled with omissions to raise his eyebrows, a new immune captain and a general atmosphere of “Here we Redaftor!”
You are not mistaken if you feel like you’ve ever seen this drama. Take popcorn while we dive into the selection circus, by practicing inconsistencies, leadership musical chairs and planning that seems to be on vacation.
Captain’s carousel: musical chairs at its best
It becomes difficult to keep a trace of who is in charge of the Pakistani cricket team – the captain changes so often that it could make a carousel sidewalk.
One month, a star like Babar Azam is at the helm; The next one, he deviates again.
In fact, Babar resigned from his post as a white ball captain from Pakistan not once, but twice in the space of 11 months, citing the workload and the form. And just when you think he could recover the throne, the PCB gives the reins to someone again.
The last torsion? Pakistan “mixed the bridge once again”, dropping its captain T20 Muhammad Rizwan for the New Zealand T20is, and putting the captain to the Rizwan deputy, Salman Agha.
Yes, a relatively fresh face now leads the team. It’s like an episode of Game of Thrones, but with cricket caps instead of crowns. With the captain who changes his hands so often, we wonder if the team bus has a “captain in service” panel that they return before each match.
Manigances selection: consistency takes a vacation
If the captain’s chaos was not enough, the selection decisions for the teams of the New Zealand Tower added an additional layer of absurdity. In a movement that can only be described as daring (or perhaps simply confusing), Pakistan selectors have dropped two of their best strikers – Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan – of the T20i team.
They are not players; One is your former world -class captain and drummer, the other was literally the current Captain T20i five minutes ago. Letting them fall both in one blow is like a chief throwing his first ingredients and trying to cook a gourmet meal with leftovers.
To make things more spicy, the Star Shaheen Shah Afridi stimulator was excluded from the ODI team for the tour. Who needs your ACE fast launcher in difficult conditions in New Zealand, right? In their place, we have a mixture of promising young people and surprise choices.
The new T20 skipper, Salman Agha, was himself a surprise choice – a player who, until recently, was not even in the T20i configuration, now responsible for leading the team.
With him, the team offers a 22 -year -old recruit goalkeeper (Hasan Nawaz) who only played 21 T20 games and a big 27 -year stroke (Abdul Samad) who has not yet played a single PSL match.
It seems that the selection committee has made a wild adventure, choosing names of a hat or perhaps scrolling the random statistics on Cricinfo at 2 am. Fans remain scratching their heads to these towers. A series, we are told that experience is the key; The next one, it’s all about young people; Then suddenly, the experience is back in vogue – it is an endless cycle of mixed signals.
This habit of Pick-And-Drop does not make anyone with favors. Players are not sure of their place play with nervous minds, and those waiting in the wings never know when a random call could come (or a random ax could fall).
Lack of vision: planning? What planning?
Currently, it is clear that the underlying Pakistan selection buffoons are a deeper problem: a global lack of long-term planning and clear vision. Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) often seems to work on a weekly weekly, extinguishing fires rather than building a lasting structure.
An overwhelming element of opinion recently described the PCB as an institution which “long abandoned meritocracy in favor of political appointments, nepotism and a culture of impunity”, where decisions are more based on personal patronage than the sense of cricket. Hard words, but evidence is not difficult to find. The best ranks on the board of directors were a rotating door, each diet distress the work of the last regime.
It is therefore not surprising that there is no coherent cricket vision – how do you plan the future when the officials could not last the season? Frequent administrative upheavals have an impact directly on cricket on the ground. The presidents of PCB come and go, bringing their own set of loyalists and ideas, to be replaced before these ideas could bear fruit. A president prefers a youth policy; The following brings the elders; A third party wants everything to the coach; A fourth gives it to the captain – it is an endless confusion.
Long -term planning to the Pakistani cricket often resembles a reflection afterwards. The good world cricket teams identify a central group, give them defined roles and remain with them through the ups and downs. In the case of Pakistan, the selection strategy is more reactive – almost as a purchase of pulse in a store.
The debacle of the Champions Trophy 2025 was an example of a manual of this dispersion approach. Pakistan crashed in the first round – a “disaster that awaits to occur” given the lack of preparation and management.
Instead of learning warning panels, the answer was predictable chaotic: lick the captain, blame a few players and make large changes without clear plan, as if hitting the reset button would make up for problems with deep roots.
Embred the chaos or repair it?
All this portrays the image of a cricket board and a team stuck in a chaos loop. It is undertaken for sure – as a reality show for cricket fans – but it is also exasperating. The inconsistency is perhaps the only coherent thing about the Pakistani cricket in recent times.
The tragedy (or comedy, from your point of view) is that Pakistan has a huge talent at its disposal. Players have skills and an abundance flair; What they desperately need is stability and a sense of orientation.
Instead of treating the team as a laboratory for endless experiences, the powers in place could consider sticking a strategy for more than a few games. Continuity does not guarantee success, but constant hash and change almost certainly guarantee failure.
For the moment, while Pakistan goes to New Zealand, fans can only hope that some of these games may be paid. Who knows – in the wacky world of Pakistani cricket, a thrown side led by a beginner captain could stun us all. It happened before! But even if a victory in a miracle series occurs, it should not excuse random decision -making. Until an appropriate plan is in place, each success will feel accidental and each failure will be inevitable.
At the end of the day, the disciples of Pakistan Cricket have two choices: kiss the chaos and enjoy unpredictable driving or demand better with a sarcastic smile and a raised eyebrow. It may be possible to do both.
After all, surviving as a fan of Pakistani cricket requires a sense of humor. Here is the next episode of this endless saga – whether it is entertaining, if nothing else, and the fingers have crossed that someone, somewhere in the PCB takes notes on how not to manage a cricket team. Until then, take advantage of the controversy, friends, because cricket is certainly not boring!
