Lahore: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) hit back at Mohammad Hafeez after the latter questioned the board’s decision to allow corruption-tainted batsman Sharjeel Khan to return to competitive cricket.
“Shouldn’t we set Standards of Dignity & Higher than any other ‘Extra Talent’ to represent Pakistan,” Hafeez had tweeted.
PCB CEO Wasim Khan said that Hafeez should be focussing on his game rather than questioning the board.
“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 is quoted as saying.
“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 the 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’ rights or wrongs. My view is, he should focus on his own game, focus on the cricketing opinion he can give but not personal opinion about other players,” Wasim said.
Sharjeel, who had played one Test, 25 ODIs and 15 T20Is, was slapped with a five-year ban by the PCB in 2017 for the role he had played in the Pakistan Super League corruption scandal.
The sentence was, however, suspended in August 2019 and he returned to competitive cricket when he was bought by Karachi Kings in this year’s PSL auction.
