LAHORE – The Pakistan Cricket Board is likely to appoint Misbahul Haq as the one-day captain after his impressive show in Test format of the game. Sources in the PCB claimed that many top PCB officials and selection committee members were not happy with the performance of Shahid Afridi as a player and case for Misbah is very strong now for the forthcoming ODI series on trial basis before the World Cup.
If he proved a success, he would be asked to continue to lead the team in the World Cup 2011 to be staged jointly by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The PCB officials are of the view that there should be a strong leader of the team for the World Cup and Afridi has failed to meet the challenge of the captaincy.
PCB chairman IJaz Butt has indicated the change of guard after meeting with Shahid Afridi, who met the chairman on return from New Zealand after losing the T20 series 2-1. The cricket circles too want the change in the ODI captaincy and welcomed the indication given by the PCB chairman.
If the performance card of both the players is taken into account, Misbah’s performance is far better than Afridi, who has represented Pakistan in record 306 ODIs and as a batsman his average is 23.81. In the last 10 ODIs Afridi has made 209 runs with not a single century or fifty and has taken 10 wickets with an average of 48.7 giving away 4876 runs.
