Friday, August 3, 2001 The Pakistan Cricket Board has just undergone a restructuring, but is the change purely cosmetic? This week's evidence is the baffling omission of Wasim Akram from a squad of 27. Moin Khan and Mushtaq Ahmed have also been left out.

The board and its selectors are claiming that Wasim's omission is part of a rebuilding policy. But this is really a witch-hunt, a settling of scores, masquerading as regeneration. Wasim could play right up to the next World Cup and is desperate to nudge nearer the 500-wicket mark in Tests.

It is an open secret that Wasim and Waqar have locked horns for over a decade. Despite Pakistan's much-trumpeted unity during this summer's tour, a most revealing moment occurred on Channel 4 television's Saturday-morning road show at Canterbury. Waqar was ill and had stayed at the team hotel. Wasim was sent to talk to presenter Mark Nicholas who asked him about disunity in the camp. He thought about it for a moment and then said that whatever the situation the players did not take their differences on to the field. It was a telling choice of words.

The PCB promises that players can get back into the squad if they perform well in domestic cricket. This is humbug. Shoaib Akhtar for one has rarely had to prove himself and for the whole of last year he hardly made it onto the field. Not that I disagree with his selection - it is the double-speak that sticks in the gullet. Moin Khan has had a good domestic season anyway and how players perform in Pakistan's Mickey Mouse home competitions is clearly of little import.

The final casualty, Mushtaq Ahmed, must also feel aggrieved. Might not the selectors have found room for both him and Danish Kaneria in a squad of 27? The forthcoming Test against India, assuming it goes ahead, will be won through experience not innocence.

For over a year there have been calls for the PCB to dump the old guard and start afresh. Calls that they have resisted until now. The rationale for dropping Wasim could apply equally to Waqar and Saeed Anwar. And I would applaud the PCB if it had the guts to retire the lot of them. But in the Pakistan system some animals are more equal than others, and they are the ones in positions of power or on mathai-swapping terms with office holders.

Waqar is in full command after Pakistan's mid-tour revival but he shouldn't count his chickens. It doesn't take much to turn Pakistan's pecking order on its head. And Waqar's ascendancy has much to do with a fortuitous final day at Old Trafford when he got away with tactics that smacked of desperation (and bordered on illegality), the umpires erred, and England folded meekly.

But don't write off Wasim just yet. He has influential allies and he will use them. As Wasim's omission was announced he was flying back to Pakistan, ostensibly to fulfil a contractual agreement with Pepsi. I doubt this was mere coincidence. While there he lobbied for a recall.

So Was might be back. The fat lady never quite manages to sing for him. If she does this time it will be a Pyrrhic victory for the PCB and another Pythonesque episode in the history of Pakistan cricket.

Born in Lahore, brought up in Rotherham, Kamran Abbasi is assistant editor of the British Medical Journal.

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