Pakistan cricketers hardly represented at the ACLT20

 
Freud of Football Roar Guru

By Freud of Football, 13 Oct 2009 Freud of Football is a Roar Guru

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After defending Pakistan as a cricketing nation on Kersi Meher-Homji’s recent piece entitled Are The Pakistan Cricket Controversies Really Justified, I thought I would give a short overview of the makeup of the ACLT20 teams by nationality*.

South Africa – 22%
Australia – 18%
India – 16%
England – 13%
West Indies – 10%
New Zealand – 9%
Sri Lanka – 9%
Netherlands – 1%
Ireland – 1%
Pakistan – 1%

(*Note: where players haven’t played internationally, and are playing in a country other than that of their birth, I have designated them to their country of birth, unless it was stated otherwise on Cricinfo)

So what should truly be an international tournament, where the best teams from around the world have been invited to compete for a huge purse, a tournament which has players born as far afield as Portugal and Malaysia contains as many Dutch and Irish national team players as Pakistani’s.

How can this be?

How can they have one representative at the inaugural Airtel Champions Trophy T20? How can a team which has been playing T20 for years at a domestic level (not first class at grade level) and after winning a World Cup in the format not four months ago, have one man – a man who at the age of 27 can boast just 3 Test, 11 ODI and 5 Twenty20 caps – represent them at such an event?

Pakistan is a huge nation.

Its population of more than 170 million is more than England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the West Indies combined. And cricket is by far the most popular sport in the nation.

Still, they have less representatives than every other nation.

Their national team currently has such talented players as Younis Kahn, Mohammed Yousuf, Shoaib Malik, Shahid Afridi, Umar Gul, and, of course, Shoaib Akhtar. Yet this CLT20 will see players with a handful of first class games from nations where domestic first class cricket is comparatively weak, such as New Zealand and Sri Lanka, gracing the fields, being watched by television audiences of many millions.

The Habib Bank Limited team (HBL) has no fewer than five internationals, including Pakistan captain Younis Kahn, on their books and would be as stiff competition as Otago or Wayamba.

Of course, the lack of players is in part due to the Mumbai bombings. Since then, IPL owners have been reluctant to have Pakistan players in their squads.

But why aren’t more of them playing in other domestic competitions?

Why don’t Tasmania for example – a state not generally blessed with talent – bring in Pakistan cricketers? Or the South Africans?

The ICC needs to stop worrying about Kenya and Bangladesh, two nations hardly blessed with talent and with relatively little infrastructure, and get the West Indies and Pakistan back on the international cricketing map.

It can’t be too long before the domestic teams come knocking on Pakistan doors.

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