Looking back now, at all that has happened since, it almost seems quaint to remember the amusement at Aleem Dar being appointed to Pakistan’s selection panel.
At that point, there was little clue of how silly things were about to get, that not one, not two, but all three of Babar Azam, Naseem Shah and Shaheen Shah Afridi would be out of the XI for the next Test, that Pakistan were actually going to go with the literal banter option of reusing the Multan pitch, and that it would be a Fakhar Zaman tweet, rather than everything else, that would somehow be deemed the thing that had brought Pakistan cricket into disrepute.
Not that the Dar Development isn’t still funny. It is, and not just because he had only a fortnight hence called time on his career as an umpire “to focus fully on my social and charity work”. It’s also because, on the face of it, it has actually worked. Of course, it’s hard to know exactly how much influence he had on decisions. A PCB selection meeting highlights video, a thing that exists for some reason, shows a full boardroom of polo-teed Pakistan legends pondering the squad for the second Test. Who is actually calling the shots here? Sarfaraz Ahmed makes a Zoom appearance, and even he was ‘rested’, like Babar, Naseem and Shaheen, though unlike them he hadn’t actually played a Test this year. Maybe he yawned at the wrong moment while on the video call.
