While the Pakistani team was being thrashed by India for six wickets on Sunday in Dubai during the 2025 Champions Trophy, Shoaib Akhtar termed the Pakistan men’s cricket management as ‘brainless and clueless’.
He castigated the team management for the selection of an all-rounder-laden team and said that the administration went for ‘intent’ when they could not even score similar to the Indian batsmen Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Shubman Gill, and added that blaming the players was useless, as management had no clue whatsoever on what to do.
230 to 241 runs in the first innings of the match were chased down by India convincingly and the Men in Blue now have an evident advantage of setting Pakistan’s hopes slim on qualifying for the semi-final of their home tournament.
“I am not disappointed at all because I knew what was going to happen,” he said in a candid video on his X account. “One can’t go about selecting only five bowlers; the whole world is playing six bowlers… you go with two all-rounders but that is just brainless and clueless management. I am really disappointed. The boys cannot be blamed; they are as lost as the management.” He stated that intent is one thing, but skills, such as those of Rohit, Virat, and Shubman, are missing. Even they have no idea what they have to execute against the opposition in the field. I mean no direction whatsoever, when the entire country has time from walking out on them.”
Give him Pakistan and he will come back in form with a match winning 100. #Kohli pic.twitter.com/6eGq048PmF
— Shoaib Akhtar (@shoaib100mph) February 23, 2025
Another video where Akhtar seemed even more disappointed was put on the platform after the first innings, in which he suggested that someone from the batting corps had to bat like Australia’s Glenn Maxwell, but unfortunately, they didn’t have the key skill set.
“This was the batting. We all know the capability of this batting lineup. They can only show intent when they have the skillset. When they don’t have the skillset, how can they do what Glenn Maxwell did (against Afghanistan in the 2023 World Cup)… just intent isn’t enough. You need intent, skillset and the execution, only then can you put up a good score. But this was Pakistan’s batting for you,” Akhtar said.
Pakistan will now play against Bangladesh on February 27 for their final league stage game. They’ll hope that Bangladesh beats New Zealand and Pakistan beats Bangladesh by a massive margin to qualify for the knockouts on the basis of their Net Run Rate.
