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The top hierarchy of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) are being made the whipping boys for Lord's disgrace when the team management should also be taken to task for adopting wrong strategies.

The best available players, though some are aging ones, composed one of the most formidable Pakistan sides ever to tour England, at least on paper.

The most experienced players were put to the test at Lord's while all the junior cricketers were kept on the sidelines. If the pre-Test preparations were poor and if the team selection for the game absurd, fingers should be pointed at the tour selection committee.

The PCB, nevertheless, has to shoulder the blame and responsibility for naming Waqar Younis as captain, endorsing an unbalanced team and appointing English-born South Africa-based Richard Pybus who has been exposed in just three weeks. Pybus, by virtue of being the coach, is part of the tour selection committee which also comprises captain Waqar Younis and the vice-captain Inzamam-ul-Haq.

Questions should have been asked from the trio why they fielded first against Kent in the last warmup game before the Test. To rub salt on the wounds, they declared their maiden outing at Canterbury after the dismissal of Saeed Anwar at 201. Even Salim Elahi, who scored a pair while facing just nine balls at Lord's, was denied a century when he was just seven short.

Now they are blaming lack of match practice for which the think tank of the team is chiefly responsible. Just to recap, Pakistan's batting lasted just 116 overs in the match and scored 203 and 179 in the two innings.

Waqar, lucky to be touring England on merit as a bowler who has not taken five wickets in an innings since 1997-98 season, continues to defy the experts of the game and maintains his decision to field in five bowlers as correct.

Will someone ask Waqar if Australia would dare think of dropping Shane Warne or Sri Lanka consider the possibility of leaving out Muttiah Muralitharan on the same surface on which Saqlain Mushtaq, considered as the most successful finger spinner, was left out.

© Dawn