u/Spirited-Command-839

The Hanif Muhammad Trophy has been scrapped again, although I believe the Quaid e Azam Trophy Silver is pretty much the same thing. Thankfully Quaid e Azam Trophy Silver will also be a first class event.

Other than that, the National Champions Cup will probably have all the top white ball players apart from those busy in the tests. However this tournament is gonna be held in Multan which is gonna be very hot, I was hoping they'd host it in Abbotabad or Islamabad. Also they increased the number of regions from 18 to 20 by including additional teams from Sialkot and Peshawar.

In the last two years, Sir Imam Bradman has performed admirably across formats in domestic cricket.

In red-ball cricket: 1631 runs @ 65.2 Average

In List A cricket: 1514 runs @ 75.7 Average & 97 Strike Rate

In T20 cricket: 547 runs @ 42.1 Average & 147 Strike Rate

Yet why is he not picked in PSL 😡 He is the solution for every format including T20 and ODI. Classic case of selectors giving no importance to domestic performances 😡.

(PS: I included the glorious Hanif Muhammad Trophy in red-ball stats. It is not a first class tournament, but I had to include Imam's greatest innings ever of 330(281) vs Dera Murad Jamali)

I am a skeptic. This looks suspiciously like a policy to remove any notion of 'A' category contracted players (multi-format players), despite every possibility of the Track AB players being able to play in T20s.

The other major headlines talked about in the press conference was the introduction of selection based on databases. Apparently 85% of selection will be handled through data while the rest 15% will be handled by selectors. Which sounds like the data will shortlist 30 or so players but the final decision-making will always be with the selectors.

Aqib was asked a pretty embarrassing question about the failures in his tenure and asked Naqvi why he's kept such a clown in the board who's obviously just buying time with these new schemes and empty promises, to which Aqib once again went on tangents about home bilateral successes.

With both Hasan Ali and Shaheen Afridi not being a part of the red ball camp in the NCA, it is quite obvious that they both will be replaced by 2 or 3 of the newer pacers in that camp, which include Saqib Khan, Mohammad Ali, Shahnawaz Dahani and Ubaid Shah. What do you all think about this and are Ali and Ubaid good replacements?

In some other news:
- Maaz Sadaqat has appendicitis which is why he couldn't play yesterday's National T20 Cup final (he was supposed to play for Abbotabad in place of Fakhar). His appendicitis surgery went well.
- The PCB asked Shan to step down from test captaincy but Shan said he wants to captain in the next two series. Apparently the PCB sees very few capable replacements. A decision will be taken soon enough.

I'm not sure if this feat has been achieved by a Pakistani before (it must have been), but anyways, great job from him. He was spinning it well while being economical despite bowling some overs in the powerplay in each game, he showed some good technique in his batting although that is a work in progress, and he fielded well too. I wanted him in the team as far back as 2024 but he was forgotten because of the favorites of some selectors. Now that he's here I hope he stays for a while. Not just in ODIs but he should be in T20s and could be a test prospect in the future too.

These are the statistics for our middle order batters in the last 1.5 years. In this period we have lost 5 out of 7 games, with middle order collapses leading to most of these defeats.

We used to view the middle order as a strength some time ago, and on paper they still have a decent record, but recently the numbers show that they've made very little impact.

I don't wanna be a pessimist but with these performances I don't think we're winning test matches a whole lot.

1st Image: Team of the Tournament
2nd Image: Emerging Team of the Tournament

I'd make two changes to the Team of the Tournament.

Firstly, Arafat over Hassan (more runs and wickets in lesser games)

Secondly, Mohammad Ali over Gleeson (Unless there's a rule for every team having at most three players in TOTT, this is an obvious change).

He will be playing the President's Trophy Grade-II in May and June (this tournament is usually not played by top-class players because it doesn't count as first class).

He has also signed a contract with PTV where his brother Arafat also plays and the captain is 21 year old Shamyl Hussain.

PTV's head coach Muhammad Wasim says that he usually picks younger, more aggressive players in the side. He wants Shamyl and Sameer to open the batting in red-ball and play aggressively. Several of the younger players in his squad have strike rates in excess of 70 and 80 in 4-day cricket.

Sameer's father says that red-ball cricket is the backbone of any batter. He says that Sameer should play every season of FC cricket even if he has broken into the Pakistan team in the future.