PCB, upset with Pakistan’s poor performance, made such a rule that Babar Azam and the team will be left banging their heads

PCB officials unanimously decided that there will be no compromise on merit, performance and fitness for selection in the Pakistan team. Pakistan Team (Pic Source X) The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has taken a big decision to facilitate the identification and development of talented cricketers in the country. The board wants to improve its domestic structure. In such a situation, a meeting was held in Lahore under the chairmanship of National Cricket Academy Chairman Mohsin Naqvi to find ways to improve. Pakistan have not been at their best in any mega tournament since reaching the final of the 2022 T20 World Cup. They failed to advance to the Super 8s from the first round of the ODI World Cup last year and the current T20 World Cup. Not just this, after the loss against a smaller team like USA, the Men in Green and skipper Babar Azam have faced criticism from fans as well as former cricketers. To stop this downfall of Babar Azam and Co., Naqvi held a three-hour long meeting which was attended by COO PCB, Salman Naseer, CFO PCB, Javed Murtaza, directors of International Cricket, High Performance Centers, Domestic Cricket, PSL, Commercial, and PCB officials. What happened in the PCB meeting According to a statement issued by the PCB, Naqvi stressed on promoting quality domestic cricket at all levels. He also announced that various tournaments will be held regularly at the club level as well as the national level. Along with this, the PCB chairman also mentioned that talented players should be professionally groomed by excellent coaches, who will help them hone their skills. Now Pakistani players will be evaluated mainly on the basis of performance, fitness and merit. PCB further wrote in its statement, “A master coach will be appointed to train domestic cricket coaches.” Domestic tournaments are now very important to get into the Pakistan team It was also discussed that players will have to participate in domestic competitions to be selected in the national team. Also, the selection criteria for the national team will be based on the performance and fitness displayed by the cricketers in domestic tournaments. During the meeting, the officials unanimously decided that there will be no compromise on merit, performance and fitness. The meeting decided to hold tournaments for all three formats of the game to promote quality domestic cricket in the upcoming season. The chairman also highlighted the need for immediate efforts to discover new talent at the grassroots level. He reiterated that investing in new talent will boost cricket at the grassroots level and help achieve good results.