KARACHI, 8 February 2004 — Pakistan overlooked former skippers Waqar Younis, Rashid Latif and all-rounder Shahid Afridi as the selectors yesterday announced 22 probables for the upcoming series against India.
But the chief selector said the door was not completely shut to former players.
“Since the series against India is very special any good performer in the domestic competition can break into the team,” chief selector Wasim Bari told AFP.
The probables will attend training camp from Feb. 24.
Bari said selectors will announce the team for the three-day Indian opener by the end of this month and the 14-man team for the first Test on March 8.
India is set to tour Pakistan in March-April for three Tests, five one-day games and a three-day provincial game, their first tour of Pakistan for 14 years.
The final tour itinerary would not be announced until a three-member Indian delegation assesses security arrangements in Pakistan next week, but a tentative program suggests the first Test will start in Lahore from March 11. Bari said serious selection is needed for the Indian series.
“The series between Pakistan and India is always special and now the Indian team is coming after a long time and with their tails up after the Australian tour. We need to be spot on in the team we select,” said Bari, a former captain.
Bari said Waqar and other players can stage a comeback by giving good performances in next week’s Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, a domestic tournament.
Waqar vowed to stage a comeback for the Indian series after being overlooked since the World Cup last year when under his captaincy Pakistan failed to progress beyond the first round. Pacer Rao Iftikhar and batsman Bazid Khan, son of former captain Majid Khan, are the only uncapped players in the probables list.
All-rounder Rana Naveed-ul-Hasan took 42 wickets in the recently concluded first class tournament while Iftikhar has been included after he grabbed 41 wickets.
Kabir, who played his first Test in 1996 and two in early 2002 on Pakistan’s tour to Bangladesh, scored 426 runs at 60.85 with a century and two half centuries to stage a comeback.
Probables: Imran Farhat, Taufeeq Umar, Yasir Hameed, Yousuf Youhana, Inzamam ul-Haq (captain), Asim Kamal, Misbah-ul-Haq, Younis Khan, Bazid Khan, Faisal Iqbal, Abdul Razzaq, Shoaib Malik, Saqlain Mushtaq, Danish Kaneria, Moin Khan (wicketkeeper), Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Sami, Shabbir Ahmed, Umar Gul, Rana Naveed-ul-Hasan, Rao Iftikhar, Shadab Kabir.
Indian Batsmen Need to Rally in Face of Aggressive Australian Bowling
In Sydney, India’s batsmen would have to rediscover their hunger for making runs if they were to going to beat a buoyant Australia in the finals of the triangular One-Day International cricket series, their captain Saurav Ganguly said yesterday.
India will meet the Australians in the second match of the best-of-three finals series at the Sydney Cricket Ground today after the home team took a 1-0 lead with a convincing seven-wicket win in Melbourne on Friday.
Ganguly said his players needed to dig deep but also noted that the tour had been long and tiring for India and it had already achieved some good results.
“It’s been a pretty successful tour. You talk about Test cricket being the real cricket and we’ve done wonderfully,” he said.
“We’ve lost this (first) final — it’s been a one-sided final — but if you go through the rest of the series it’s been pretty hardly-contested and I don’t think any side who’s been to Australia ... for the last three of four years have been able to put up such a show.”
