Shoaib Malik: “If you remember, I was the one who tweeted. Now, everyone remembers that. I tweeted, ‘when will we come out of friendships and favours?'”
Image taken by: Bimal Mirwani
Pakistan all-rounder Shoaib Malik has taken a dig at opening batsman Imam-ul-Haq, hinting that he is benefiting from “friendships and favours.”
Imam has been one of Pakistan’s top performers in ODI cricket, but lately, he has not been making the grade.
In the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup, the 27-year-old nephew of former Pakistan chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq scored 162 runs in six matches, which included a top score of 70, at an average of 27.
“When he was scoring runs consistently with [the] same strike-rate, no sixes, maybe two fours, we were okay as a nation. Why were we ok that time? Why did it not bother us? If you remember, I was the one who tweeted. Now, everyone remembers that. I tweeted, ‘when will we come out of friendships and favours? God helps those who are honest’,” Malik told A Sports as quoted by NDTV.
“I talked about everything in our system [in the tweet]. If I were diplomatic, I wouldn’t shoot myself on the foot when the World Cup squad (T20 World Cup 2022) was about to get announced. It was about the whole infrastructure. And I’m sticking to my tweet.”
Pakistan won their first two World Cup games against the Netherlands and Sri Lanka before losing four in a row to India, Australia, Afghanistan and South Africa.
Even though they fought back to defeat Bangladesh and New Zealand, they could not qualify for the semi-finals.
The men in green ended their campaign in disappointing fashion as England crushed them by 93 runs.
Imam will now represent Pakistan in their upcoming three-match Test series against Australia, which will start on December 14 in Perth.
Pakistan Squad for Australia Test Series: Shan Masood (captain), Aamer Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Khurram Shahzad, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Noman Ali, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi
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