Not taking the words of senior cricketer Mohammad Hafeez lightly regarding selection of tainted Sharjeel Khan, Pakistan Cricket Board has suggested Hafeez to mind his own business.
In a strongly worded warning to Mohammad the PCB chief executive officer Wasim Khan said the batsman should be “focusing on his own cricket” instead of giving opinions on “right and wrong” after Hafeez questioned the return of Sharjeel Khan to competitive cricket.
Sharjeel had received a 5 year ban from the PCB for the role he played in the PSL corruption scandal from 2017. The board suspended his sentence following an “unconditional apology” in August 2019, paving way for a sooner-than-expected comeback. Even so, it seemed unlikely that he would play in this year’s PSL until the Karachi Kings bought him at the auction and deployed him as their opening batsman.
Hafeez was replying to one such question on Twitter when he said, “Shouldn’t we set Standards of Dignity & Pride Higher than any other “Extra Talent” to represent Pakistan.”
The PCB CEO didn’t take kindly to that. “Current players should not be going up on social media to criticise other players or talk about what policies the cricket board should or shouldn’t have,” Wasim said through a video link from Lahore.
“They can have their opinions about various things about world cricket and cricket in general but not about the rights and wrongs of players and the boards and they should leave that to cricket board to answer.
“I will be personally speaking to Mohammad Hafeez about that and I don’t think it’s his place to be doing it. No other player in the world does that so why should our Pakistani players do that? I don’t think they have any space to do that and I don’t think they should be doing that. That’s my personal view. Coming from an English environment, I never saw an English player tweet about policies, procedures, talking about other players’ right or wrong. My view is, he should focus on his own game, focus on the cricketing opinion he can give but don’t give personal opinion about other players.”