I was chatting yesterday to Yasir Ali of KRL and Rawalpindi regarding what he had been up to of late and unfortunately Yasir seemed very down and disappointed and is actually thinking about quitting cricket and moving abroad.

2nd July 2009

I was chatting yesterday to Yasir Ali of KRL and Rawalpindi regarding what he had been up to of late and unfortunately Yasir seemed very down and disappointed and is actually thinking about quitting cricket and moving abroad.

Fast bowler Yasir who played one test for Pakistan against Bangladesh a few years ago was left out of the Rawalpindi Rams Twenty/20 squad at the last minute despite attending the trials, warmup matches and all practice sessions, in favour of players according to Yasir who had not attended many of the practice sessions or warm up matches and were selected and pushed up the pecking order very late in the day.

According to Yasir, more and more players in domestic cricket are feeling disgruntled with the way that teams are being selected for domestic competitions and to many of the players it’s a story of who your backers are rather than how good you are, or how hard you work in practice.

I asked Yasir if selection policies were deteriorating or have things always been this poor. Yasir stated that lately things seemed to be getting worse with relative unknowns appearing from nowhere on match days when some of the proven Under 19s players etc were being ignored by their respective domestic teams and sitting in the stands watching games instead of being given a chance.

Yasir went on “what is happening is that domestic teams are giving players the go ahead to play for other teams in the 4 day version and telling them that it will be fine to come back and play for them in the one day version and the 20 over format, but then backing down on their word”. Yasir added “this is exactly what happened with me in that Rawalpindi said it would be fine for me to play for KRL in the Quaid E Azam Trophy and play for Rawalpindi in the RBS Twenty/20 Cup, but then they backed down on what they had agreed”.

Yasir continued “players just want to be given a fair chance and to get selected on merit, rather than players being selected due to non cricketing reasons”.