The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman, Mohsin Naqvi shared his views after Pakistan’s first-ever 10-wicket defeat at home in a Test match, which came against Bangladesh on Sunday, August 25 at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium. Following the embarrassing defeat, the PCB Head called for “major surgery” to fix issues in the side, who have been on a horrific run.
Although, the PCB Chair also questioned the state of domestic cricket in Pakistan while adding that the selection committee has no pool to turn to, resorting the player combination which has been more or less same and pointing out how the board has opted to introduce Champions Cup to identify new players.
“The problem is the selection committee has no pool to turn to from which to select players. I spoke of surgery because we need to fix our problems. But when we look at how to resolve them, we don’t have any solid data or player pool which we can draw from. The whole system was a mess. The Champions Cup will produce great talent, and we’ll have records for the games that happen. For surgery, you need all the tools to perform it,” Naqvi said as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.
PCB to take help from AI to replace non-performers in national team: Mohsin Naqvi
The PCB Chairman, who recently introduced the Champions Cup as a part of their domestic cricket, added that the board is using artificial intelligence (AI) to prepare squads for the upcoming tournament. Speaking to the media on Monday, August 26, Naqvi added that the top players in the domestic tournament will replace the non-performers in the national team.
“We had a lot of players for which we didn’t have records. This Cup will make domestic cricket strong, we’ll have a pool of 150 players, and then the surgery we need to be done, the selection committee will do. People said ‘do it all today, slit the throats of four-five players, and get rid of them’. You can’t dump someone unless you have a better one to replace them,” Naqvi said.
“These 150 players that have been selected, 80% of it has been done by AI (Artificial intelligence), and 20% using humans. Nobody can challenge that. We gave about 20% weightage to our selection committee. If we replace a player with a worse one, you’ll be the first to complain. We’ll have records and we’ll all be able to see transparently who deserves a place in the team,” the Chairman further added.