People who selected Woodhill should be taken to task: Mudassar Nazar

ISLAMABAD: Former cricketer Mudassar Nazar said the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) officials who selected Australian Trent Woodhill for national team's batting coach should be taken to task.

PCB's director international cricket and head of coach selection committee Intikhab Alam announced the appointment of Australian coach Trent Woodhill prior to the Champions Trophy to help solve the players' perennial batting problems.

Mudassar, who had played 76 Tests and 122 ODIs for Pakistan between 1976 and 1989, said big Pakistani players like Zaheer Abbas and Inzamam ul haq had also applied for the job that time than how can the PCB ignore them and appoint Woodhill. "How can you compare Woodhill with Zaheer and Inzamam," Mudassar said in an interview to website Pakpassion.net.

Mudassar said appointing Woodhill was good for his (Woodhill's) CV only as being Pakistan's batting coach was a big thing. "I cannot understand who made the decision of appointing Woodhill," he said adding that Pakistan team is in dire need of a batting coach. Mudassar, who was also the Director of Game Development in Pakistan, said ever since Muhammad Hafeez has lost his opening spot he had been struggling at number three.

"Hafeez makes his place in the team because of his bowling," he said. Veiws on Misbah ul haq being captain till 2015 World Cup, Mudassar said Misbah is a very calm player and his influence has been fantastic over this team. "When you go into a one-day game, you should go in with the intention of scoring 300+ to put the game away from the opposition but that's not the case when Misbah comes in to bat," he said and added that to win the World Cup, a captain needs to do a bit more than that. You need to dominate right from the first ball.

Talking about Coach Dav Whatmore, Mudassar said team's performance hasn't been great under Whatmore, but you can't blame solely on him. "He's an experienced coach but I don't think the PCB will renew his contract as it's never been done in the past," he said.