Mohammad Hafeez has been told to “focus on his own cricket” by the CEO of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Wasim Khan, after the former appeared to criticise Sharjeel Khan‘s return to professional cricket.
Sharjeel was handed a five-year ban from cricket for his role in the 2017 Pakistan Super League (PSL) spot-fixing scandal but a made a return to this year’s PSL after his ban was shortened after he gave an “unconditional apology” for his actions in late 2019.
Hafeez tweeted about Sharjeel’s comeback to his 3.4 million followers earlier this week, saying: “Shouldn’t we set Standards of Dignity & Pride Higher than any other “Extra Talent” to represent Pakistan. Just Asking.”
Shouldn’t we set Standards of Dignity & Pride Higher than any other “Extra Talent” to represent Pakistan 🇵🇰 Just Asking https://t.co/9xxIvcAqM8
— Mohammad Hafeez (@MHafeez22) March 20, 2020
Khan objected to Hafeez’s comments, saying: “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. 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 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’ right or wrong. My view is, he should focus on his own game, focus on the cricketing opinion he can give but don’t give personal opinion about other players.”
