Virender Sehwag, a former cricket player from India, has accused Pakistan selector Wahab Riaz of showing partiality when choosing the national team. In November of last year, Riaz was named chief selector of the Pakistan national men’s selection committee. He promptly summoned up his playing partner, Muhammad Amir, to rejoin the team.
Sehwag brought up the fact that Amir had retired and was criticizing the team on national television, but that Wahab had already left to participate in the T20 World Cup in the US and the West Indies when he entered the picture.
The two figures that used to voice their criticism of their national team on Pakistan TV news stations are Wahaz Riaz and Muhammad Amir. Currently, one of them plays first team while the other is a selector. After criticizing the team once, what are they doing now that they are in a position of authority?” Sehwag stated during a conversation on Cricbuzz.
“Let’s include Amir on the team as we have played together. This is not possible,” remarked the former opener for India.
Sehwag used Ajit Agarkar, the chief selector for India, as an example to illustrate his point that it would be unfair to favour any of the retired players—including him—over the current group of players.
“Ajit Agarkar would say, ‘Come on Viru, I’ll help you make a comeback into the team,’ now that he is the BCCI head of selectors. This task remains unfinished. You need to have future vision. You now have a task at hand as a selector. Don’t do favors with it; use it wisely,” advised Sehwag.
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has come under intense scrutiny for the captaincy crisis in addition to player selection. After leading the T20I team for just four months, pace bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi was replaced, and Babar Azam was promoted.
Babar was selected even though he had guided Pakistan through a catastrophic group stage elimination at the 50-over World Cup in India the previous year. Giving Babar the captaincy armband proved to be a costly mistake as Pakistan was unable to advance to the Super 8 of the T20 World Cup.
