The PCB has reconstituted its selection committee again, the latest on the day of another home Test thumping, this time at the hands of England. Shortly after England completed an ultimately comfortable innings win in Multan, the PCB announced Aleem Dar, Aaqib Javed, and Azhar Ali as the new members of the panel, joining Asad Shafiq, the analyst Hassan Cheema, and the captain and the coach, who were already part of the committee.
All seven members will have a vote on selection. In addition, there are four non-voting members in Azhar Mahmood (the assistant coach), Bilal Afzal (an advisor to the PCB chairman), Nadeem Khan (director - high performance) and Usman Wahla (director - international cricket).
The additions came ten days after Mohammad Yousuf's resignation from the panel. No head of the committee has been named but it now means that since August 2021, Pakistan have used 26 different selectors.
The appointments came within an hour of Pakistan's innings-and-47-run defeat, becoming the first team in Test history to lose a Test by an innings after scoring over 550 in the first attempt. It was Pakistan's third Test loss at home in a row and their seventh in their last nine home Tests.
The immediate task for the new committee will be to pick a squad for the second Test, also in Multan, which starts next Tuesday - the PCB had only announced a squad for the first Test. The members met at the PCB's National Cricket Academy in Lahore on Friday afternoon, and will travel to Multan on Saturday to meet the head curator, captain Shan Masood and head coach Jason Gillespie, after which they will finalise the squad.
Pakistan captain Shan Masood hits back at claims that the hosts were not mentally strong enough.
Changes are likely with the performances of four to five players under the scanner. And despite scoring a hundred in the first innings, Masood's captaincy is likely to be a subject of discussion given his longer run of indifferent form and a record that now reads zero wins and six successive losses. Pakistan have now slipped to the bottom of the WTC points table with only 16 points from eight games.
When asked at the post-match presentation in Multan if Pakistan could see some new faces for the second Test, Masood said, "Look, we're in the middle of the series. We've talked about a squad mentality. We've talked about consistency. Where I'd like the team to improve is no matter what the pitch is like, we must find a way out. And England showed us the way in this Test match, you have to give huge credit to them."
The selection panel had been restructured only earlier this year - with no chief selector - under PCB chief Mohsin Naqvi, but has since seen Wahab Riaz and Abdul Razzaq sacked after Pakistan's early exit from the T20 World Cup in June, without any replacements named. Yousuf's resignation at the end of last month also did not lead to a replacement immediately, which left Shafiq as the only voting member outside of the captains and coaches.
Dar's appointment is bound to attract attention, given how rare it is for umpires to become selectors. Though he stepped down from the ICC's elite panel last year, he has continued to umpire domestically and in home internationals. He announced recently, however, that this season would be his last as a professional umpire.