Salman Agha on the cricket he wants to play as new Pak skipper as they prepare for the T20i series against New Zealand.
Salman Agha promises ‘fearless and high-risk’ brand of cricket.
For the forthcoming white-ball tour to New Zealand, Agha took Mohammad Rizwan’s place as T20I captain. He is the most recent in a succession of captains that has already included Shaheen Shah Afridi and Babar Azam.
Pakistan’s poor performance has persisted, as evidenced by their loss to the USA in the T20 World Cup group stage last year. The squad has undergone a complete transformation as a result, with several new members and, notably, the departure of some well-known players.
“It’s an honour for me and also a challenge,” Agha said at a press conference in Lahore. “We’ve brought a few youngsters into the team who have been playing the brand of cricket in domestic cricket that we want to play in the national side going forward.
“We have to focus on our intent and approach. We have to improve that. In modern day cricket, these things are important. This is a young team and we want to play fearless cricket. That is high-risk cricket, which is a requirement in modern cricket. There will be failures with that approach, but we have to support our players.”
With an eye towards the Asia Cup (in the T20 format) later this year and the World Cup in India and Sri Lanka the following year, the PCB announced that Agha has been named captain. A player who is familiar with this style of cricket, Shadab Khan, has been called up to serve as vice-captain for this initiative.
“The reason for Shadab coming back is that he has good captaincy experience, plus also his mindset is to play aggressive cricket,” explained the interim head coach Aaqib Javed “His mindset is important because as vice-captain, with Agha also thinking that way, Shadab will be good. The combination is good.”
Although there have been rumours of a new coach, Aaqib, who is also in charge of selection, will continue to play those roles for the five Twenty20 Internationals and three One-Day Internationals against New Zealand. When asked directly about Babar and Rizwan’s fates, he made a strong connection between their non-selection and the playing style Pakistan hoped to embrace.
“You can’t rule anyone out forever, but for the moment, we feel that we need to bring in newer, younger players and change the style of cricket we are playing,” he said. “Many teams have separated their T20 sides from the others, up to 80-90% [of the personnel] different.”
“Top players like Babar, Shaheen, Riz, they travel so much they don’t have time to play their domestic cricket,” he said. “Now they have time to play domestic cricket. Until you play four-day cricket you will not improve in Tests or ODIs. It cannot be that you play 70% T20 cricket all year and then suddenly you play Tests or ODIs.”