Pakistan have no talent pool to turn to: PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi

Pakistan recently suffered a heavy 10-wicket defeat at the hands of Bangladesh — their first loss against the neighbours in Test cricket. The Men in Green had gone with an all-pace attack and declared on 448/6 in the first innings when they had a chance to bat the opposition out. Bangladesh pounced on the opportunity by taking a 117-run lead before bowling Pakistan out for just 146.

Many have criticised Pakistan's bowling, Shan Masood's captaincy and the fact that they have not utilised their talent pool from domestic cricket. However, PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi believes that Pakistan do not have enough talent to turn to.

"It was a very disappointing loss," Naqvi was quoted as saying by Associated Press on August 26 (Monday). "The problem is the selection committee has no pool to turn to."

Naqvi had assured that a "surgery" would be done following Pakistan's early elimination from the T20 World Cup 2024, but that problems have spilt over for Pakistan in Tests as well, with them suffering a heavy defeat at home. While admitting that a solution needs to be found, Naqvi says that there aren't many talented players to pick from.

"We want to fix our problems," Naqvi said. "But when we look at how to resolve them, we don't have any solid data or [elite] players pool which we can draw from."

The PCB, on August 26, announced Waqar Younis as one of the five mentors for the Champions Cup domestic one-day tournament, which is set to begin on September 12. The other four mentors named by the PCB are former stalwarts Misbah-Ul-Haq, Shoaib Malik, Saqlain Mushtaq and Sarfaraz Ahmed. Naqvi said that the 150 players selected for the tournament were picked with the help of Artificial intelligence.

“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. People said ‘do it all today, slit the throats of four-five players, and get rid of them’. You can’t dump someone unless you have a better one to replace them.

“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. 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.”

Pakistan will hope to bounce back in the series with the second Test against Bangladesh on August 30 (Friday).