Miandad urges PCB to hire Faisal Iqbal as batting coach

Batting great Javed Miandad has urged the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to appoint middle-order batsman Faisal Iqbal as the batting coach of the Men in Green.

 The 62-year-old insists that Pakistan’s head coach-cum-chief selector Misbahul Haq needs a specialised support staff to end the batting woes of the Men in Green.   

"I think that the board has overburdened Misbah by assigning him the dual responsibilities of head coach and chief selector. The board needs to be a bit realistic and think out of the box by appointing a specialised batting coach," Miandad told APP. "I think the Board was reluctant to hire Faisal due to his relationship with me. But if you speak on merit, he deserves to serve as Pakistan's batting coach."

"Faisal have done coaching courses from England and is the best possible option for the batting coach position," he added.

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Pakistan were clean swept three-nil by Sri Lanka in the recently-concluded T20 International (T20I) series in Lahore.

Faisal has served as the batting coach/consultant for the Pakistan Super League (PSL) franchise Karachi Kings and T10 League franchise Maratha Arabians. The 37-year-old had also applied for the batting coach position when PCB advertised for the post, but was unable to get the role.      

The legendary batsman, who was inducted into the International Cricket Council Cricket (ICC) Hall of Fame in 2009, also advised the PCB to hire the services of former cricket greats at regional level to train the upcoming budding players.

"We need to give authority to our local greats who can pass on their skills in the best possible manner to the players at regional level," he said.     

Miandad, who scored 8,832 runs in 124 Tests, said he used to teach batting techniques to Pakistan’s batting greats like Inzamam ul Haq when he was associated with the team.

"See how great figures they had become by learning the basic techniques," he said. "Our players don't think of making big runs therefore lag behind in chasing even small totals. We need to improve the mentality of our batsmen.”

Miandad believes that the current Pakistan skipper Sarfaraz Ahmed is the best choice to lead the side due to the paucity of options available at PCB’s disposal.