Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
After Pakistan’s disastrous exit from the T20 World Cup 2026, national selector Aaqib Javed has called upon the country’s cricket board to react in a level-headed manner. In a desperate bid to perhaps save his own job, Javed said that Pakistan should move away from a scapegoating culture in the aftermath of a difficult tournament.
Pakistan have endured a very difficult period in international cricket over the last four years. Since featuring in the 2022 T20 World Cup final, the team have been knocked out in the group stages of the ODI World Cup 2023, T20 World Cup 2024 and Champions Trophy 2025. They stuttered in the Asia Cup 2025 and then failed once again in the T20 World Cup 2026.
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PAKISTAN’S SPIRAL IN WORLD CRICKET
Not only have the team’s performances been poor, the Pakistan Cricket Board has also failed to stick with a consistent team management group and has hired and fired some of the top coaches in the world, including Gary Kirsten and Jason Gillespie. Amid all the hiring and firing, it is Aaqib Javed who has survived the wrath of the PCB.
However, after yet another disaster in a world tournament, Javed has been proactive about finding solutions and changing the culture of the team, stating that the PCB needs to react in a constructive manner after difficult tournaments.
“In our setup, whenever a team loses, there is always a demand to punish someone,” Aaqib Javed said in a press conference in Lahore on Saturday, March 14.
“It happened at the previous World Cup, then the Champions Trophy and the Asia Cup. Whenever we lose, we go over the top, demanding the whole team, coach or selectors be changed. The way we change coaches and selectors never happens anywhere else in world cricket. We’ll have to move past scapegoating people,” he added.
The national selector argued that the team had done well in the 2024–25 season but failed to play well in the Champions Trophy hosted in Pakistan and the UAE. The hosts had to travel to the UAE to play India, where they failed miserably against their arch-rivals.
“I admit that Champions Trophy was a disaster. Until then, the team’s performance was going well. Here, we beat South Africa, Sri Lanka and Australia, which suggested that we were going to do well in the T20 World Cup. Did you not have expectations that this team would do well? I certainly did,” Javed said.
‘PAK CRICKET HAS NOT BEEN DESTROYED’
The former player also defended Pakistan’s T20 World Cup 2026 campaign, stating that it was just one game in the Super 8s that the team lost, which ended up having an adverse effect on their net run rate.
“We qualified for the second round and we lost only one game against England. Did anything else happen? It was not possible to win by that margin against Sri Lanka, which we required. We lost just one game and only missed out due to net run rate. It’s not such a big issue to say our cricket has been destroyed,” Javed said.
Pakistan are currently playing in Bangladesh in a three-match series. After losing the first game, Pakistan made a strong comeback in the second ODI, winning the rain-affected match by 128 runs.
A new selection committee, which includes big names like Misbah-ul-Haq and Sarfaraz Ahmed, has been named after the team’s T20 World Cup exit. The new committee will be responsible for building the country’s team for the ODI World Cup 2027.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
