LAHORE: A claim has surfaced regarding the sudden removal of Sarfraz Ahmed as head coach of the national Test team, attributing the decision to a dispute over selection for the Lord’s Test.
The account comes from sports journalist Abdul Majid Bhatti. According to him, many journalists did not attempt to establish why Sarfraz Ahmed and Umar Gul were sent back along with players.
Mr Bhatti claimed that a message was sent to Sarfraz Ahmed by Aqib Javed stating that either Ubaid Shah or Aamer Jamal must be played in the Lord’s Test, and that Mohammad Rizwan should be dropped in order to hand a debut to Ghazi Ghori.
According to Mr Bhatti, when Sarfraz Ahmed raised the message with captain Babar Azam, the captain gave a categorical response that he would take the field with Mohammad Rizwan and Khurram Shahzad.
Mr Bhatti said displeasure arose over this, and that Sarfraz Ahmed was removed after the Lord’s Test.
The Lahore Times carries the above strictly as a claim attributed to a single named journalist. None of it has been confirmed by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), by Sarfraz Ahmed, by Aqib Javed or by Babar Azam.
Under the Editorial Policy, single-source claims are cross-referenced before being presented as fact. That verification has not been possible at the time of publication. Readers should treat every element of the account above — the existence of the message, its content, and the causal link to the coach’s removal — as unverified assertion rather than established fact.
The Lahore Times has approached the PCB for a formal response and will publish it in full on receipt. Any of the individuals named who wish to place a statement on the record may do so through the editorial desk.
The public interest test is met by the subject matter rather than the sourcing. Selection authority in Pakistan cricket — specifically, where the boundary lies between the team management, the selection committee and the captain — has been among the most persistently contested questions in the game’s administration for decades, and it has repeatedly produced abrupt departures at coach and captain level.
Successive PCB administrations have restructured the selection architecture, at various points vesting selection in an independent committee, in a chief selector, in a combination including the captain and head coach, and in a director of cricket. Each configuration has generated the same friction at the same point: the question of who has the final word on the playing eleven on the morning of a Test match.
Three things would move this from claim to fact: confirmation or denial from the PCB; an on-record statement from Sarfraz Ahmed; and clarification from Aqib Javed as to whether any such communication was made. Until at least one of those is available, the story is properly labelled as an allegation.
Readers are reminded that The Lahore Times corrects factual errors promptly and prominently. Corrections may be sent to editor@lhrtimes.com.
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