'Never consulted on team selection for England tour'

Pakistan coach Waqar Younis has said that he was not consulted by the selection committee over the team composition for various tours, including the tour to England earlier this year and the World Twenty20.

"This is not for the first time that this has happened," Waqar told the national assembly's standing committee on sports, according to a report in Dawn. "I was totally snubbed during the selection of the Twenty20 World Cup team."

It also emerged on Tuesday that neither Waqar nor limited overs captain Shahid Afridi were consulted in the selection of the squad for the Twenty20 and ODI series against South Africa later this month.

However, chief selector Mohsin Khan told the committee that Waqar was not in Pakistan at the time. "I am following the best practice. When the team for the England tour was announced, the coach was not even in Pakistan."

The inclusion of Yasir Hameed and Wahab Riaz, and the overlooking of former captain Younis Khan and Mohammad Sami for the England tour was said to have irked some of the selectors themselves, who were thought to have been against the decisions, and were apparently not consulted.

The committee also took up on Younis' continued omission from the team, asking the PCB to decide on the issue in a week. "We will direct Younis to contact the PCB and the board should resolve the matters relating to him within a week," legislator Saud Majeed said. Younis is the only one among the seven players punished by the board after the Australia tour whose case is still stalled. Five of those seven players were selected to tour England, but Younis wasn't among them.

Pakistan had a positive start to the England tour, beating Australia in the two Twenty20 internationals, and then levelling the two-Test series with a victory at Headingley, Pakistan's first Test win over Australia in nearly 15 years.

However, they lost the first two Tests against England before winning the third. During their defeat at Lord's in the final Test, the series was hit by spot-fixing allegations against the then captain Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif. They were provisionally suspended by the ICC before the Twenty20 series. Pakistan lost both Twenty20s and the subsequent one-day series 3-2.

The committee has also asked the board to submit a report on the scandal and the tour itself.