Pakistan Cricket never fails to surprise – or rather, shock – its fans. The latest team message for the upcoming tour in New Zealand is no exception.

In true Pakistani style it is filled with eyebrow-raising omissions, a new captain out of the blue and a general mood of “Here we go again!”

You haven’t wrong if you feel like you’ve seen this drama before. Grab some popcorn as we dive into the selection circus, have many discrepancies, leadership music chairs and planning that appear to have gone on vacation.

Captain Carousel: Music chairs on its finest

It will be difficult to keep track of who is responsible for Pakistan’s cricket team – the captain is changing so often that it could make a carousel dizzy.

A month is a star like Babar Azam at the helm; The next he goes aside again.

In fact, Babar withdrew as Pakistan’s white ball captain not even, but twice in 11 months with reference to workload and form. And just when you thought he might regain the throne, the PCB hand over the reins to a new one.

The latest VRI? Pakistan has “mixed the tire once again,” and dropped their T20 captain Muhammad Rizwan for New Zealand T20is and handed over the captain of Rizwan’s deputy, Salman Agha.

Yes, a relatively fresh face now leads the team. It’s like a Game of Thrones episode, but with cricket caps instead of crowns. As the captain changes hands so often, one wonders whether the team bus has a “Captain on duty” sign they turn before each match.

Selection Shenanigans: Consistency takes a holiday

If the Captain Kaoset was not enough, the selection decisions for the New Zealand Tour Squads have added an extra layer of absurdity. In a move that can only be described as bold (or maybe just confusing), Pakistan’s voters fell two of their best blows – Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan – from the T20i troop.

These are not just any players; One is your former captain and world-class Batsman, the other was literally the current T20i captain until five minutes ago. Droping them both at once is like a chef who throws out his most important ingredients and tries to make a gourmet meal with leftovers.

To make things spicings, star Pacer Shaheen Shah Afridi has been left out of the ODD troop for the trip. Who needs your ace fast bowler under tough New Zealand relationship, right? In their place we have a mix of promising young and surprise choices.

The new T20 skipper, Salman Agha, was himself a surprise choice -a player who until recently was not even in the T20i setup, now entrusted to the lead.

Along with him, the team has a 22-year-old rookie keeper (Hasan Nawaz) who has played only 21 T20 games, and a 27-year-old big-hitter (Abdul Samad) who has not played a single PSL match yet.

It seems that the selection committee was going on a wild adventure, picking names out of a hat or perhaps rolling random statistics at Cricicinfo at. Fans are left to scrape the head of these U-swing. A series we are told that the experience is key; The next thing is about youth; So suddenly the experience is back on fashion-it is an endless cycle of mixed signals.

This habit of pick-and-drop doesn’t make any favors. Players are insecure in their place playing with jittery mind, and those who wait in the wings never know when a random call-up can come (or a random EACS can fall).

Lack of Vision: Planning? Which planning?

At present, it is clear that underlying Pakistan’s selection antique is a deeper question: a general lack of prolonged planning and clear vision. Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) often seems to be working on a week-to-week, which sets fires instead of building a sustainable structure.

A judgmental opinion recently described PCBs as an institution that has “long left meritocracy in favor of political appointments, nepotism and an impunity” where decisions are more based on personal patronage than cricketing -sans. Hard words, but the evidence is not hard to find. The top ranks of the board have been a rotating door where each incoming regime regrets the last regime’s work.

It’s so much surprise that there is no consistent cricketing vision – how do you plan for the future when the responsible people may not last the season? Frequent administrative shakes have directly affected cricket on the ground. PCB chairmen come and go and bring in their own set of loyalists and ideas, only to be replaced before these ideas can bear fruit. A chairman prefers a youth policy; The next one brings back the seniors; A third wants all power to the coach; A fourth hands it to the captain – it’s endless confusion.

Long-term planning in the Pakistan crick often feels like a reflection. Good teams in the World Cricket identify a core group, give them defined roles and stay with them through ups and downs. In Pakistan’s case, the selection strategy is more reactive – almost like an impulse purchase in a store.

Champions Trophy 2025 -Debaklen was a textbook example of this scattergun approach. Pakistan crashed into the first round – a “disaster waiting to happen” considering the lack of readiness and direction.

Instead of learning from the warning signs, the answer was predictably chaotic: the sack captain, blaming a few players and making wholesale changes without any clear plan, as if hitting the reset button magically solving deeply rooted problems.

Embrace the chaos or fix it?

All this paints a picture of a cricket board and hold on to a loop of chaos. It certainly engages – like a reality show for cricket fans – but it’s also annoying. The discrepancy is perhaps the only thing that is consistent with the Pakistan -crick in recent times.

The tragedy (or comedy, depending on your view) is that Pakistan has enormous talent available. The players have skill and flair in abundance; What they desperately need is stability and a sense of direction.

Instead of treating the team as a laboratory for endless experiments, the forces that may consider sticking to a strategy for longer than a few games may be. Continuity does not guarantee success, but constant chopping and change guarantees almost certainly failure.

Currently, as Pakistan heads to New Zealand, fans can only hope that some of these gambles might pay off. Who knows in the crazy world of Pakistan-cricket, a cast-together side led by a beginner captain maybe just stunned us all. It’s happened before! But even if a miracle series victory arises, it should not excuse the random decision making. Until a proper plan is in place, any success will feel unintentional and any failure feels inevitable.

At the end of the day, Pakistan Cricket’s followers have two choices: embrace the chaos and enjoy the unpredictable turn or demand better with a sarcastic smile and a raised eyebrow. Maybe it’s possible to do both.

After all, it requires survival as a Pakistani cricket fan a sense of humor. So here is for the next episode of this endless saga-so it be entertaining, if nothing else, and the fingers crossed that someone, somewhere in PCB, notes how not to run a cricket team. Until then, you can enjoy the controversy, people because cricket is definitely not boring!