Why did Pakistan reveal T20 World Cup 2024 squad without a vice-captain? Internal conflicts revealed in report
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), after some wait, named their 15-member squad for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2024, slated to be held in June in USA and West Indies.
Interestingly, the Men in Green were the last team to announce their roster.
Another glaring fact was that the PCB announced the squad without naming a vice-captain. While Babar Azam has been bestowed with the captaincy reins, the dynamic right-hander doesn't have a deputy with a week left for the mega-event to start.
Now, new information has come to light which reports there have been internal conflicts.
An ESPNCricinfo report states that the vice-captaincy was offered to their star pacer Shaheen Afridi, who has turned down the offer.
In the end, the World Cup squad, which was named just hours before the ICC deadline to submit the final squad, did not officially have a vice-captain.
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PCB-Shaheen saga at the centre again
For the unversed, the Shaheen-PCB saga has been going on for sometime now. After Babar Azam was stripped off his captaincy last year following an embarrassing ODI World Cup campaign, the PCB named Shaheed as their new leader in the white-ball format.
However, after leading the side for just a series, Shaheen had to relinquish the captaincy reins as PCB decided to go the other way.
Not only did they re-offer the captaincy position to Babar, the PCB website put out a press release quoting Shaheen offering Babar warm words of encouragement after the new developments.
Surprisingly, it was later found out that Shaheen had never said those words.
Soon, PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi rushed to their camp in Kakul in a bid to mend the situation which, as current situation depicts, was an uneasy truce.
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