No Names in the Blame, Three Names in the Squad: What Pakistan's Cricket Shuffle Really Is

At a function in Lahore, Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Mohsin Naqvi stood with a microphone and said he was not blaming any individual player. In the same breath he added that Pakistan does not lack talent, only hard work. In his words, even very good cricketers ruin themselves after entering the team; once fame arrives, the grind of practice is no longer something they want to carry.

What was heard inside the hall more than the speech was the rest of it: “In a country of 240 million we select 14, and still we have to teach them everything.” That single sentence contains the real address of Pakistan cricket's current crisis, even though Naqvi himself did not want to point to it.

My habit as a man who sits in press boxes is a simple one: stay in the corridor after the match. Whenever Pakistan come to Dhaka, one scene from that corridor comes back to my notebook — the reporters have gone, the physio's box is shut, and two senior players sit inside doing their own arithmetic: who said what, who wrote what, which word the board man used today. That part of cricket journalism never appears on a scorecard. But it is the most reliable raw material for reading a dressing room's weather.

Context: two different events, one single narrative

Pakistan are playing a home tri-nation series right now, alongside England and Sri Lanka. They have won two matches and sit in a good position. Immediately after that came the squad for the two-Test series against Sri Lanka, which runs from 9 to 21 November. Babar Azam stays captain, but former Test captain Shan Masood has lost his place. Three new faces have come in — Samir Minhas, Mohammad Taha and Mohammad Suleman — who earned the call on domestic form.

Here is the first accounting problem. The tri-nation series and the Test series are entirely different formats, with different squad logic and different yardsticks. Yet the market of conversation blends them together, as though two white-ball wins at home automatically settled the red-ball team. The format of the tri-nation series is not clearly stated anywhere either; tri-series of this kind in Pakistan are usually 50-over events, but without written confirmation that cannot be assumed.

The second event is bigger. Mohsin Naqvi is simultaneously PCB chairman and Pakistan's Interior Minister. Every sentence from a sitting political minister at the top of cricket administration is not only a cricket sentence; it starts to sound like an administrative instruction. That is precisely why “nobody is to blame” had to be said so emphatically.

Core analysis: who carries the blame, who makes the call

Pakistan cricket's biggest crisis right now is not player form but the fact that nobody keeps a clear written record of who carries the responsibility. The sentence Naqvi spoke is not about selection; it is about coaching. “We still have to teach them everything” came not from a coach but from a board chairman. That is the owner of the whole education chain, from domestic to national team, admitting the system has to restart from the beginning at its final stage. This is not a motivational line; it is a receipt for systemic failure.

Babar Azam and Shaheen Afridi have been called “inconsistent”, but not a single number sits behind the claim. Inconsistent in which format — T20I, ODI or Test? Over what period — six months or two years? At home or away? Without answers, “inconsistent” is a comment, not a measurement. Shaheen's injury and workload history never came up either, even though for a left-arm quick that is the most important data pillar of all.

Shan Masood dropped and three domestic performers brought in looks like a victory for “form over reputation”. But a selection becomes policy only when its criteria are written down beforehand. Here three names arrived, but on which domestic numbers, for which positions, with how long a run — nothing was said. A change without criteria is a message, not a mechanism. And what is the message? The message is that the seniors are under pressure.

Where that pressure comes from deserves scrutiny too. From the Lahore Qalandars event Naqvi demanded that PSL franchises develop young cricketers, and spoke of school cricket and the domestic structure. The idea is healthy, if it is actually implemented. But the danger hides elsewhere: if franchise training becomes a recognised pathway into the national team, the line between commercial interest and selection policy blurs. Who keeps the record of which club developed whom?

A team's stability cannot be measured by two home wins — especially when the stands are half full and the opposition has not brought its best side. In an empty or half-empty ground, every touch of the ball sounded like a question: whose proof is this win, exactly? Two wins in home conditions are too small a sample for any conclusion about long-term strength. Yet the tone of the conversation suggests the problem is nearly solved.

An old line keeps returning to my notebook — the table froze, but the players kept writing their own minutes. In 2026, when the official table froze, unpaid wages, contracts and who was training where were all being logged by players and supporters themselves. Pakistan are in that condition now: the board's official language is motivational, but the actual daily ledger is kept by fan groups, match threads and corridor rumour.

Contrarian view: a moral story is not an answer to a technical problem

Everyone is reading this as follows — the big stars have grown complacent, and the chairman jolted them with hard words. I want to look elsewhere. When the man who runs the system says the system's end product has to be “taught everything”, that is not proof of star laziness; it is proof of a leak in the coaching pipeline. Pushing blame downward in one remark is easy. The hard work is publicly showing at which stage of the domestic structure the skill is being lost.

Blame without names has a particular administrative advantage — nobody is caught, but everyone feels the pressure. This kind of language produces two reactions in a team environment: some become desperate to prove themselves, others quietly group together in resentment. It is especially risky for three uncapped players, who are walking into a dressing room where senior players are under open or semi-open accusation.

And one thing cannot be dodged: the board chairman is also the Interior Minister. The International Cricket Council's administrative norms carry a sensitivity about member boards being run by active government officeholders, and Pakistan's cricket history has old precedents of political interference. There is no reason to expect formal action now. But with this dual role in place, any hard decision in future will be difficult to sell as a cricket decision.

Takeaway: three questions for November

The Sri Lanka Test series starting 9 November is the real examination. Three things to watch. First, whether each of the three newcomers gets two Tests and two innings, or is dropped after one match — that will tell us whether this is policy or a message. Second, whether Naqvi's language changes after the first defeat or the first batting collapse; if it does not, the problem is not in the players but in the narration. Third, when the PSL franchise training call becomes a formal selection criterion — and who writes that criterion.

In the end only one question remains: there are no names in this ledger, but whose blame is it? If nobody writes the answer down, every new name will merely be another instalment on an old account.