Mohsin Must Act Against Javed & Misbah
When Aaqib Javed walked into the PCB selection committee in October 2024, it appeared a solid appointment on paper. Former fast bowler, World Cup winner from 1992, decent coaching record with the U-19s and Lahore Qalandars, Javed had the requisite background. Mohsin Naqvi quickly granted him real powers. Within months, he was not just picking teams but also working as interim coach in all formats and later running the high-performance side of things. For a while it felt like one man was calling all the shots and taking the big calls.
There were early bright spots. The Test series win against England on home turf is one shining example. That spin-heavy approach on dry, turning pitches, exploiting home advantage to its best, caught England unawares and helped hosts achieve a rare home series victory. The ODI wins under Mohammad Rizwan’s captaincy in Australia thereafter, after a long drought, and the clean sweep in South Africa (3-0) also looked promising at the time.
Javed has pointed to those results more than once under a pressure cooker situation. After all, Javed’s ego had to be massaged at any cost.
But look at where the team stands now, and the picture seems grim, especially in Test cricket. Bangladesh whitewashed them 2-0 at home in May 2026. That was the second successive series sweep Bangladesh had completed against them. Then, just days ago, West Indies beat them by 90 runs in the first Test in Tarouba at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Trinidad. Chasing 211, they folded for 120. Babar Azam fought a lone battle, unbeaten on 58* while the wickets kept falling like a pack of cards on the other end.
These are not one-off bad days. The side has lost the bulk of its recent Tests, numbers floating around talk of 13 defeats in the last 17 matches and a long streak of eight consecutive away losses. They sit near the bottom of the World Test Championship and look short of ideas outside Asia, and also in Asia.
In white-ball cricket, the bilateral results have been better at times, for example winning the last three ODI series against Australia and two against South Africa, but the big tournaments keep ending in disappointment.
Group-stage exit at the home Champions Trophy, another early exit from the T20 World Cup, four major ICC events in a row without a semi-final. That is hard to spin as progress.
Selection has been the most frustrating part. Players like Mohammad Rizwan, Abdullah Shafique, Saim Ayub and Fakhar Zaman have been in and out without any clear, consistent logic. Sajid Khan, a genuine fighter with the ball in Tests, has faced the same treatment. Every time he has been given a proper run, he has performed, yet he still finds himself dropped or left on the fringes. Sufiyan Muqeem, the left-arm chinaman, has been similarly overlooked despite offering something different. Naseem Shah, a complete package and one of the promising young quicks, has also been handled with strange inconsistency. Meanwhile, Shadab Khan keeps getting opportunities even when his recent form has dipped.
The captaincy calls have raised eyebrows, too. Shaheen Shah Afridi, physically fragile and frequently managing fitness issues, was handed the ODI captaincy almost out of nowhere. Agha Salman, a consistent performer in ODIs and Tests, was given the T20 captaincy even though his batting does not naturally suit the format’s demands. On the other side, relatively unknown names with thin domestic records, such as Ghazi Ghori, have received repeated chances while proven domestic performers like Haseebullah Khan and Kamran Ghulam are ignored.
Spin is loaded into squads even when the conditions scream for pace and balance. The side that had just won away in Australia and South Africa was tinkered with heavily before the Champions Trophy. Babar Azam has been shifted up and down the order in Tests more than once, and forced to open the innings in a major tournament. And those extreme spinning tracks that worked against England start looking less clever when the same team cannot compete on normal surfaces overseas.
Javed’s answers after each failure have become predictable: collective decision, conditions, fitness, “we need to stop scapegoating people.” After a while those lines stop sounding like explanations and start sounding like excuses.
There have been other headaches as well. Jason Gillespie’s public reprimand, calling Javed a “clown” and accusing him of undermining both him and Gary Kirsten to grab the coaching jobs, still hangs in the air. The odd public comments, the Babar fitness confusion, the sense that too much power sat with one person- none of it helped.
Misbah-ul-Haq’s situation has not helped the overall feeling either. People still remember the composed, no-nonsense captain and coach. The version we have seen lately is different: selector, mentor, consultant, sometimes overlapping roles, exits and returns. The PSL consultancy, while on the PCB books, only added to the questions. It does not match the image most fans had of him.
Of course, cricket in Pakistan has deeper structural problems than any one individual: the constant chopping and changing, the weak domestic structure, the habit of reacting instead of responding with a robust plan.
Aaqib Javed did not invent those problems. But under his watch, the Test results have hit a new low, the big tournaments continue to disappoint them, and the selection policy has looked confused and short-term. Enough time has passed. Enough chances have been given.
Mohsin Naqvi needs to take a call and make the right call. Keeping the same setup in place while the team keeps sliding is no longer defensible. Removing Javed from the selection and high-performance roles will not fix everything overnight, but it would at least show that results still matter. If the board waits much longer, the decline risks becoming permanent. The team cannot afford to keep disappearing from the serious conversation in international cricket.
(The author is an independent content writer and blogger. As a cricket aficionado, he often writes about the game. He can be reached at bilalahsandar@yahoo.com.)
