Former Pakistan batter Ahmed Shehzad has lashed out at the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for deliberately denying him the opportunity to represent the nation and play franchise cricket. Shehzad took a dig at all the six franchises in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) claiming all of them denied him entry into the competition. He detailed – without elucidating – that he knew “exactly the reasons why I’m not made part of the PSL.” The batter has now decided to retire from the format claiming he is keeping his self-respect intact. 

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Shehzad makes big claim

“I have tried really hard in domestic cricket consistently in the last few years, and did reasonably well in the National T20 Cup just before the PSL draft. There seems a deliberate effort to keep me out, even when franchises have opted for other performers with inferior numbers than me,” he said.

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“But when everything is pre-planned it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know whose responsibility it is to get top domestic performers in the PSL then,” he added.

Shehzad was the epicenter in Quetta Gladiators’ success in the 2019 PSL season when they won the title. He played a superb match-winning knock in the final as Gladiators beat Peshawar Zalmi in a one-sided contest. The title remains the only success story for Quetta Gladiators, who got knocked out in the group stage in each of the last four seasons.

The 32-year-old Shehzad, however, had a poor campaign in the 2020 season as he scored just 61 runs in seven matches. The poor campaign proved to be the final straw for the player and has since not appeared in the PSL. Despite being a free agent, no franchise has intended to get the services of the former national team batter. He scored 1077 runs in 45 PSL matches at a strike rate of 120.06 and was the first Pakistani to score a hundred in T20I cricket.

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