Pakistan batter Fakhar Zaman was left out of the PCB's list of centrally contracted players, released on Sunday (October 27), shortly after he was issued a show cause notice for a controversial tweet criticising the decision to drop Babar Azam. PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi explained why. Read here.
On Sunday afternoon, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced their list of centrally contracted players for the 2024-25 season. Five emerging players in Khurram Shahzad, Mohammad Abbas Afridi, Mohammad Ali, Muhammad Irfan Khan and Usman Khan were handed contracts for the first time.
Fakhar Zaman left out of PCB's central contracts list
Shaheen Shah Afridi and Haris Rauf were both downgraded, from category A to B and B to C respectively. Among the players to miss out on a contract entirely was senior batter Fakhar Zaman.
Fakhar was recently embroiled in controversy when he put up a post on X (formerly Twitter), criticising the idea of dropping star batter Babar Azam from Pakistan's Test team, shortly before Babar was indeed left out of the last two home Tests against England earlier this month.
He was served with a show-cause notice by the PCB a day later, which gave him seven days to "explain his position" to the board. After the news of his own exclusion from the central contracts list, there has been speculation that this post was the reason Fakhar was left out.
PCB chair: The bigger issue is Fakhar's fitness test
Shortly after the announcement, PCB chair Mohsin Naqvi addressed the media at a press conference, where Mohammad Rizwan and Salman Ali Agha were also appointed as Pakistan's white-ball captain and vice-captain respectively.
Naqvi was asked about the reason for Fakhar's exclusion, to which he said, "There is the tweet issue definitely. But that doesn’t matter as much as his fitness tests. He had two issues: the fitness test and the show-cause notice, which is still pending. That is why he hasn’t been included.
"Fakhar spoke well in the connection camp, and because of that, we’ve fixed a lot of things and are doing more in the international department.
"I appreciate him for that, but it can’t happen that if a player gets dropped by the selection committee then another player starts doing tweets against it. This isn’t allowed and won’t be allowed. But the bigger issue is his fitness test."
Pakistan's next assignment after the home Tests against England is a white-ball tour to Australia followed by a white-ball tour of Zimbabwe. The squads for these series were also announced today, which can be found here.
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