Sarfraz deserves a place in team: Miandad

• Javed Miandad says Sarfraz Ahmed deserves a place in Twenty20 team as he is an excellent wicket-keeper.
• Miandad says I cannot understand on what basis Sarfraz was sacked from the team.

ISLAMABAD: Batting legend Javed Miandad on Thursday said Sarfraz Ahmed deserved a place in the Twenty20 team as he was an excellent wicket-keeper and could have provided some advice in the ongoing encounters against Australia.

“I cannot understand on what basis Sarfraz was sacked from the team. As a player Sarfraz would have scored coming in at No. 7 or 8. As a senior and experienced player his advice could have proven useful in the games,” Miandad, who played for Pakistan in Tests and ODIs between 1975 and 1996, said on his YouTube channel.

Pakistan team lost the second Twenty20 to Australia by seven wickets while the first game was washed out by rain. The third and last T20 would be played on Friday.

Miandad said, "nowadays T20 cricket was so fast that we see teams scoring big totals like 200, 250 or more. The Australian team is very strong and don’t let any team win on the home soil ”.

The former skipper, who had scored 8,832 runs in 124 Tests, said there was no Pakistani batsman who could take the team along and lacked maturity. “All players look like as they are playing for themselves just to score 30 to 40 runs,” he said.

He criticized the selection process saying players have been picked and dropped in every series. “At our times playing at domestic level was like county cricket,” he said.

Miandad was of the view that players needed practical trainers not laptop coaches to meet the challenges of modern-day international cricket. “When I was coach I used to demonstrate players the techniques on how to improve their skills,” he said.

Miandad, who was widely known for his historic last ball six against India in 1986 at Sharjah, urged the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to drop those players from the team who have been underperforming, time and again. “PCB is paying a handsome amount to players and they need to understand this,” he said.

He said the players before going on any foreign tours should seek the expertise of former cricketers. “Players should focus on singles in the game,” he said.