Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman Ijaz Butt questioned the selection of the ICC ODI Team of the Year that has just one Pakistani player, Umar Gul. The 12-man squad, led by MS Dhoni, has four Indians, three Sri Lankans, two South Africans and one each from Australia, England and Pakistan. “Clive Lloyd, I have a question,” said Butt raising his hand when the emcee of the function Mark Nicholas threw the floor open for a media interaction.
“I just see one player from Pakistan, but some of the boys really did pretty well and they deserve your consideration,” Butt said. “We had discussions about that,” the West Indian great Clive Lloyd stated. “When you are picking a side you are looking at the balance. We did not want to have an overload of spinners or quicks. I agree with you (Ijaz Butt). There were not a lot of great performances. They were consistent but not tremendously great performances,” he observed. Meanwhile, asked about the omission of the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir, Lloyd said: “There were a lot of people on the selection panel.
Sachin Tendulkar is well and truly what you call a batting god and it is very difficult to leave him but when you look at some of the players (picked ahead of him) they have done reasonably well, they had done better than him.”
