Pakistan players restless over team director Mohammad Hafeez’s ‘long meetings and lectures’, claim reports
After being clean sweeped by Australia in the three-match Test series, things haven’t gotten any easier for the Pakistan cricket team on their tour of New Zealand. Led by Shaheen Shah Afridi, the visitors trail 2-0 in the five-match T20I series.
Amidst the defeats are reports of discontent in the Pakistan dressing room that suggest the players haven’t taken well to the new team director Mohammad Hafeez.
Per media reports in Pakistan, the players are unhappy and are growing restless with “long meeting and lectures” held by Hafeez. “He holds very long meetings and gives long lectures and some of the players get restless because same things are repeated,” one of them suggested.
Also doing rounds on the social media are videos of the team director having long discussions with the new keeper batter Azam Khan and spinners over technical aspects.
It is believed by those in the know of things that Hafeez, who’s been tasked by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to assign NOC to the players for the foreign leagues, granted the same to only certain players. While Shadab Khan, Azam Khan, and Shaheen Shah Afridi were granted NOCs for the International League T20 in the Emirates, when others sought permission for the Bangladesh Premier League, the issuance was stalled.
Hafeez, who was appointed the men’s team director by the PCB after the team’s dismal outing in the World Cup, has been coping fire for their recent failures.
In Australia, the former Pakistan captain was also criticised by many for suggesting that while the hosts won the Boxing Day Test, Pakistan had been wronged by the umpires and technological failures and were “the better team”.
Hafeez, who made his national team debut in 2003, featured in almost 400 games across all formats before he called it quits in 2021.
