‘Selection committee has no pool to turn to’ - Mohsin Naqvi questions Pakistan cricket's depth

Following an embarrassing exit from the T20 World Cup, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Mohsin Naqvi called for "major surgery" to fix the issues. Almost two months have passed since that but the board has not made any changes. On top of that, Pakistan lost to Bangladesh in the opening Test of the two-match series in Rawalpindi, which has only put more pressure on the management.

After the defeat, when Naqvi was asked about his idea of the "surgery", the chairman questioned the state of domestic cricket in Pakistan. He stated that the selection committee has no pool to turn to, which is why, the team is stuck with the same bunch of players. He claimed that the "whole system was a mess" and that the upcoming Champions Cup, which PCB recently launched will help them identify new players.

“The problem is the selection committee has no pool to turn to from which to select players. I spoke of surgery because we need to fix our problems. But when we look at how to resolve them, we don't have any solid data or player pool which we can draw from. The whole system was a mess. The Champions Cup will produce great talent, and we'll have records for the games that happen. For surgery, you need all the tools to perform it,” Naqvi was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

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Naqvi expects that the Champions Cup will create a pool of at least 150 cricketers. He mentioned that the PCB doesn’t have a record for many domestic cricketers and that 80% of the players were picked via Artificial Intelligence. He expects the competition to give more clarity, and based on which, they will make future teams.

“We had a lot of players for which we didn't have records. This Cup will make domestic cricket strong, we'll have a pool of 150 players, and then the surgery we need to be done, the selection committee will do. These 150 players that have been selected, 80% of it has been done by AI (Artificial intelligence), and 20% using humans. Nobody can challenge that,” Naqvi said.

"We gave about 20% weightage to our selection committee. If we replace a player with a worse one, you'll be the first to complain. We'll have records and we'll all be able to see transparently who deserves a place in the team," he added.