Pakistan's poor show with the bat in the Asia Cup has led to Khurram Manzoor finding himself out of the squad for the ICC World T20 2016, with the experienced opener Ahmed Shehzad returning.
The top three of Pakistan barely fired in the four matches of the Asia Cup, leading to question marks being asked about the likes of Manzoor, Sharjeel Khan and even the former captain Mohammad Hafeez.
Those questions have led to the Pakistan selectors deciding to drop Manzoor from the World T20 squad, with Shehzad, who was decent with the bat in the PSL, scoring 290 runs, coming in his place.
"The inclusion of Khurram backfired and as a chief selector I take full responsibility," Haroon Rasheed told ESPNCricinfo. "Call it an error of judgement or whatever, but we all have seen him scoring runs in domestic cricket and we gave him a chance. He didn't grab it.
"It's up to the player to justify his selection and in his case he didn't. We gambled on Malik last year and it paid off."
Rasheed admitted there were no real obvious candidates to replace Manzoor in the squad, but the experience of Shehzad tilted the balance in his favour.
"Now when we look around for who is going to replace Khurram, we don't really have a serious contender, but Ahmed at least has some experience under his belt," Rasheed added. "He did show some form in PSL too, otherwise we haven't seen any other [great] opening batsman."
More than looking for a change in the opening batsman position, Pakistan might be better served in tweaking their batting order a little. Sarfraz Ahmed can easily come up the order and open the batting, while Umar Akmal is too talented a batsman to be left in the middle order.
The enigmatic right-hander could be promoted up to No.3 – even No.4 looks a little too deep for him in the T20 format -- and Pakistan can maybe think about tweaking their middle order smash-bang options a little.
However, Shehzad is someone who can take the game away from you on his day, and Pakistan will hope the right-hander has those kinds of days quite often in the WT20.
