PCB to follow head coaches' advice, no disciplinary action on Pakistan players

Karachi: The Pakistan Cricket Board has decided to act on the advice of its foreign head coaches and will avoid taking any disciplinary action against any players while allowing them to focus on the upcoming international season.

A well-placed source in the board informed on Saturday that initially, there were talks about having a disciplinary committee to look into the cases of some players misbehaving during the tours of Ireland and England and the World T20 Cup.

“But until now no disciplinary committee has been formed as per the board constitution,” he said.

The source said as per the constitution, the chairman must appoint independent disciplinary or probe committees if he wants some issues of discipline to be looked into.

According to the source, the PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi held detailed discussions with the red and white ball coaches, Jason Gillespie and Gary Kirsten respectively, along with the selectors Mohammad Yousuf and Asad Shafiq.

The board was advised to look ahead.

“Yes, the head coaches will take calls with the captains on resting and managing workload off some players, but only (those) players who have not performed for a while now could be dropped for the coming season,” he said.

The source added that Pakistan would go with a full strength squad for the first Test against Bangladesh later this month and Gillespie will reach Rawalpindi by Monday to start a training camp for the probables.

He also disclosed that with no white-ball cricket until November, a decision on selecting Mohammad Amir and Imad Wasim would be taken later on.

Both the senior players were convinced to come out of international retirement to play in the T20 World Cup.

“The coaches assured the chairman that they should be given time to settle down the team and remove any issues within the team. Their take was that (the) matters are not that serious that can’t be resolved in the dressing room,” he added.