The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) today named Shoaib Akhtar as the captain of one of the teams featuring in its new first class competition to be contested among the country’s best performers.The Pentangular tournament will be contested by the four provinces and one team of federally administrated areas will be led by Akhtar, but the interesting aspect is that the bowler has been picked by the selectors among 75 best performers in the country who will contest here while the Board has appointed the captains.Besides Akhtar, Shoaib Malik will lead the Punjab side, Younis Khan the North West Frontier Province team, Shahid Afridi the Sindh province and Nasim Khan the Balochistan outfit in the tournament that starts from February 10.The Board had dropped the temperamental Akhtar from its list of centrally contracted players last month, insisting he had not gained enough points in the new ranking points system introduced to categorise the players for the contracts.Chief selector Salahuddin Ahmed insisted that there were no disciplinary issues involved with Akhtar not getting a central contract. “We were not satisfied with his match fitness that is all. He struggled with his match fitness in India. But he is certainly not injured,” Ahmed said.He said the idea was to give Akhtar responsibility so that he plays all the matches and improves his match fitness before the home series against Australia in March-April. Ahmed said as far as the selectors were concerned, the fast bowler remained a key bowler for the team.Akhtar has refused to sign a special retainer given to him by the board after dropping him from the central contracts list. He recently said he did not need any contracts or retainers to play for his country and he did not do this just for money.When Shafqat Naghmi, the chief executive of the PCB, was asked about how Akhtar was given the responsibilities after the Board had expressed doubts over his fitness, he said this was not the case. “The selectors have explained everything. As far as his not signing the retainer is concerned. If he does not want it we can’t force it upon him,” Naghmi said.
