Rejigged Windies tour justifies Amir, Wahab’s Test retirement decision: Inzamam

Batting great Inzamamul Haq has criticised the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB)’s decision to make way for more Twenty20 International (T20I) matches, during West Indies tour, by reducing Test matches.

Earlier, the PCB had said in a statement that, in consultation with the Cricket West Indies and keeping an eye on this year’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, they had agreed to replace one Test match with two additional T20Is during their tour of West Indies.

Inzamam believes that this decision justifies pacers Mohammad Amir and Wahab Riaz’s decision to step away from Test cricket.

“I don’t mind if they want to play more T20Is for practice or money but Test cricket should not be sacrificed for this,” said Inzamam while speaking on his official YouTube channel. “If you remember that when Amir decided to retire from Test cricket, he faced a lot of criticism for preferring T20Is and league cricket over Test matches. The same happened with Wahab Riaz as well. But now the board is giving the same message by replacing Test matches with T20Is. How can you stop the players from quitting Test cricket, in the future, if you are pursuing the same line of thought?”

“I request the ICC and other boards to stop running after money because when the players will adopt the same approach, you will get hurt,” he added.  

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The former Pakistan captain also stated that the Men in Green should not be worried about lack of matches ahead of the T20 World Cup, later this year.

“If you wanted more practice for T20 World Cup, we should have asked them for T20Is without reducing Test matches. If you ignore Test matches, it will hurt our cricket in the long run. Even if Pakistan didn’t get more T20I matches against West Indies, we still would have had enough practice with matches scheduled against England and New Zealand,” he concluded.