Kamran Akmal: Waqar was a failure as coach
No stranger to controversy Pakistan international Kamran Akmal has delivered an explosive interview in which he slammed former coach Waqar Younis.
Kamran feels that Waqar’s desire to experiment caused Pakistan to regress unnecessarily with the best team not getting out on the park.
Pakistani publication DAWN quote Kamran as saying: “With due respect, Waqar was a failure as coach and he caused lot of damage to Pakistan cricket. In his enthusiasm to experiment and sideline established players, he put the national team back by two to three years.
Waqar had two stints in charge of the Pakistan with the second ending after the team’s abject failure at the World T20 in India in 2016.
Kamran is the first player to openly speak against Waqar but he claims that there were a number of players who had issues with the former fast bowler.
He went on: “I don’t know the reasons but Waqar certainly had issues with some players. He had no plans on how to take Pakistan forward. An example was when he went to the 2015 World Cup and asked Younis Khan to open the innings and then sidelined Sarfraz Ahmed until late in the tournament.”
The wicketkeeper batsman feels that Waqar took actions that caused disruptions within the team.
He added: “I can remember Umar Akmal scored a hundred in an Asia Cup match and in the next game he was batting behind Shahid Afridi and others. Waqar no doubt was a great player for Pakistan but as a coach he was a total failure.
“He took six to seven new players to Bangladesh after the World Cup and the result was we lost both the one-day and T20 series for the first time against them.”
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Kamran painted Waqar as a hard trainer who did little to help the team improve their skills.
He griped: “I have played under different coaches including Bob Woolmer and I can say they used to plan and they used to create a rapport with the players. Waqar insisted on training hard all the time and not having the players also focus on their skills and cricket development was damaging to the team.”
Chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq and coach Mickey Arthur recalled Kamran for the limited overs section of the tour to the West Indies earlier this year, despite playing all three matches he was not included in the squad that went on to win the ICC Chmapions Trophy.
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