Quaid-e-Azam Trophy explains Quaid-e Azan Thophy.

click here forABN-AMRO Patrons Trophy explanation.

__________________
Ern

Adil Nisar 27y**
Shoaib Khan 20y*

I will study admins post below, then present a team.

__________________
Ern

Part of the article states "The competition has been contested sometimes by regional teams, sometimes by departments, and sometimes by a mixture of the two." This comment just adds to the confusion about the strength of this competition. Is there any difference in strength between the two competitions? The Quaid-e-Azam Trophy is also split into a Gold League and Silver League. Is there any difference in strength between these two leagues? The reason I ask is that matches in both leagues are rated as First-class. The same applies to the ABN-AMRO Patrons Trophy - there are two groups. Both groups are rated FC and the players in both groups appear in the same stats tables on cricinfo.

__________________
Administrator

Mike, both the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy (QAT) and the Patron's Trophy (currently sponsored by ABN Amro Bank) are genuine four day first-class competitions. I think the QAT has recently been divided into two leagues, similar to the County Championship's two divisions - of course, each group/league is genuinely first-class, and promotion and relegation happens every year, or at least should do. The Patrons' Trophy has two groups, but these are merely "pools", and the top two from each pool qualify for the next phase of the league.

There is a detailed description of both competitions in my post right here on WAT in the Domestic & First Class Cricket Forum (link), hence no need to delve into Cricinfo or Google! This description is somewhat dated, especially in the context of Pakistani cricket where things change very often and very drastically - for instance, in the intervening year or two since I wrote that, the PCB has introduced two-division format for QAT, introduced more teams, changed the number of matches, etc. However, it should be a helpful resource nonetheless.

In summary, the main difference between the two competitions is that regional teams and cricket associations play in the QAT (eg Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, etc), and departmental (ie corporate) teams play in the Patrons' Trophy (eg Pakistan International Airlines, National Bank, Pakistan Customs, and various other banks and public corporations).

Many players play in both types of teams, departmental as well as regional, as the two competitions do not run at the same time - typically, the Patrons' Trophy gets under way in the second half of the season (Dec/Jan) whilst the QAT typically is completed by December. Hence, the Cricinfo profiles of most Pakistani Test/ODI players would contain both a regional and a departmental team.

The website of the Pakistan Cricket Board (link) is a good source of info on Pak Domestic Cricket and is much better than Cricinfo etc in my experience. The QAT Points Table for 2005/06 can be seen here, and this page also has links to averages, schedules, etc. The Patrons' Trophy Points Table can be seen here, and this page has the schedule, statistics and other links. The results of the final stage of the Patrons' Trophy (where the top four teams play each other in a Super-League) can be seen here. There is also some relevant info there about the players who were awarded prizes for performance during the tournament.


This year, there also seems to be an additional "Pentangular" tournament in March & April - which it seems will comprise the two Finalists of the Gold League (ie Division 1 of the QAT) and the Winner of the Silver League (ie Div 2) of the QAT, as well as the top two departmental teams from the Patrons' Trophy. Hence, we will end up with a five team league, comprising three regional teams (Faisalabad, Sialkot, Karachi Harbour) plus two departments, to get the overall champion for the Country.

I hope the above is of some use?

__________________
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes
Mark Twain

The PCB website also offers some interesting rankings of Pakistani domestic players (link). The system used for the "National Cricket Rankings" is described here, and seems a decent enough basis - interestingly (and perhaps unusually), these rankings include matches over the previous five domestic seasons. Recent matches are given more weight in the rankings than earlier ones. Perhaps unhelpfully, the rankings exclude A-team tours and matches, which is a tad unfortunate.

The batting rankings can be seen here - Faisal Iqbal heads the list, and would be the first batsman on my list for Pakistan-A team, irrespective of whether he meets the WAT Criteria or not. There are also some lesser known players in the top five in Shehzad Malik and Adil Nisar. Shahid Yousaf at no.8 is one who Woolmer has talked of as a potential Test player, whilst Rafatullah Mohmand (at 11) was even selected for the Test squad for the recent home season, in a shock selection. Interestingly, everyone's favourite Hasan Raza is way down the order at 13, almost 2,800 points below Faisal.

The bowling rankings (link) are headed by Fazl-e-Akbar, an old-timer who does very well in domestic cricket but has always failed to make the grade at international level. Muhammad Asif, the current sensation and India's nemesis, is at no.11, probably reflecting the fact that he has not been around for all of the past five years and has improved a lot since he first came on the scene.

Of course, three young tearaways who impressed so much during the Under-19 World Cup do not have much domestic cricket pedigree, so do not appear in these rankings, but each of the three Jamshed Ahmed, Anwar Ali Khan and Akhtar Ayub are being touted as having great potential (even on the generally cautious Cricinfo - link). Jamshed is talked of as a "young Wasim Akram", and Anwar Ali Khan's inswingers are very similar to the stock delivery of another young Khan some 30 years ago. Almost everyone who has watched that match has commented on how good these three guys were, and I would not be surprised if Jamshed is even called up for the first team squad in the near future.

__________________
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes
Mark Twain

Thanks for that description Maranello. Pakistan A matches are first-class fixtures so I'm surprised they don't count toward the rankings. Secondly, There seems to be a problem with the system of two separate FC competitions because some players only play in one comp and may only get 5 matches if their team doesn't make the finals. The other problem is that many players play really well in one comp and then play badly in the other. The reason, I believe, is that they are playing in two different teams which is effecting their continuity. The other issue is that players get moved up and down the batting order which also effects continuity and performances.

On the subject of Under 19 players, history shows that many U-19 players won't get to the top level. Some of the Pakistan U-19 players have a good stock ball but need to be more consistent in landing it in the right area. The other key factor to being an effective bowler is developing some variety to keep the batsmen guessing. As a bowler, you don't want to be predictable. I don't understand why the Indian batsmen in the final were allowing the ball to go through to the keeper when it was obvious that the bowler was constantly bowling inswingers. They showed poor judgement which contributed to a couple of wickets.

__________________
Administrator

So are we ready to narrow it down guys? Lets name a list I think then lets make some cuts how about that??

__________________
CRICKET IS IN MY BLOOD

I'm sorry that, due to work and overtime, I haven't been available to continue the selection process but I have a few days off from Monday so I will focus on finishing this thread and finalizing the team. In the meantime, please think about which two players you must have in the final team. Hopefully, this strategy will start the team selection with a core group of players which we can build on via discussion and compromise. Please PM me the names of your two key players. When every selector has done that I'll post the results and we can move on from there.

Sorry, for the delay with posting my provisional team but I found it difficult finding any consistent batsmen and I found it difficult choosing the bowlers from a large pool of candidates. It seems to me that too many bowlers have abnormally good figures whilst too many batsmen have ordinary figures. I'm not too sure what the reason for this is but a good system should be able to define its best players a lot better than this.

Now we can move forward with the selection process. If you have posted a provisional team please PM me with two key players from your team you must have in the final XI. We will use those players as the core group of the team and discuss the rest of the players to fill out the team.

lets start