Wahab Riaz and Abdul Razzaq, who served as members of Seven Members Selection Committee have been sacked by PCB.
This decision came owing to the heat and criticisms following Pakistan’s horrible exit from ICC T20 WC 2024 , where they lost against USA and India, getting knocked out from group stage.
The anger heated up too when Riaz and Razzaq took part in ongoing World Championship of Legends in England, since they took part in Charity Cricket amidst such imbalanced situation of Pakistan’s Cricket.
Former Cricketers like Ramiz Raza also criticised Pakistan’s team selection for ICC T20 WC 2024 , especially inclusion of Mohammad Amir and Imad Wasim in line up where they haven’t been in set up for years, especially Amir who was called back from retirement.
While Razzaq served in both the men’s and women’s national selection setup, Wahab served as the chief selector for the men’s side before being reduced to a member of the seven-member committee a few months ago. The committee has not had a chief selector in this period.
According to an International Cricket Council (ICC) statement, “Pakistan have further confirmed the restructuring of the selection committee with details on its composition to be soon announced.”
Wahab, who appeared in three World Cups for Pakistan, also served as the senior team manager during the recent T20 World Cup tour to the Americas. Since 2020, the PCB has had six high-profile selectors with Wahab, Mohammad Wasim, Shahid Afridi, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Haroon Rashid, and Misbah-ul-Haq in varying and brief tenures.
The remaining five selection committee members of the current set-up are the head coach (Gary Kisten for ODIs and T20Is; Jason Gillespie for Tests), captain Babar Azam, Mohammad Yousuf, Asad Shafiq and data analyst Bilal Afzal.
Pakistan are next slated to host Bangladesh for a two-match Test series starting August. They will also host England for three Tests before embarking on limited-overs tours to Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa later this year.
