By Priscilla Jepchumba
Pakistan’s cricket performance has been deteriorating with each series, which has prompted the country’s board to adopt a unique strategy to identify talent.
Mohsin Naqvi, the chief of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), has announced that they are using artificial intelligence to broadly select players from the country’s domestic pool. Despite AI being widely used in IT, e-commerce, and other industries, PCB is the first board to openly acknowledge its use in player selection.
During a press conference, Naqvi addressed the media about the subpar performance of the national men’s team, especially following their recent loss to Bangladesh at home. Naqvi had previously called for significant changes after Pakistan’s early exit from the 2024 T20 World Cup, but little has been done since then.
“The problem is the selection committee has no pool to turn to from which to select players,” said the PCB chair. “I spoke of surgery because we need to fix our problems. But when we look at how to resolve them, we don’t have any solid data or player pool which we can draw from. The whole system was a mess. The Champions Cup will produce great talent, and we’ll have records for the games that happen. For surgery, you need all the tools to perform it,” he stated.
“We had a lot of players for which we didn’t have records. This Cup will make domestic cricket strong; we’ll have a pool of 150 players, and then the surgery we need to be done, the selection committee will do. People said ‘Do it all today, slit the throats of four-five players, and get rid of them’. You can’t dump someone unless you have a better one to replace them,” said Naqvi.
Naqvi revealed that the 150 players who will be selected, will see 80% population getting picked purely using AI. The human involvement will be just 20%.
“Of these 150 players that have been selected, 80% of it has been done by AI (Artificial intelligence), and 20% using humans. Nobody can challenge that. We gave about 20% weightage to our selection committee. If we replace a player with a worse one, you’ll be the first to complain. We’ll have records and we’ll all be able to see transparently who deserves a place in the team,” the chairman said.
“The Champions Cup will end in September, and then there will be records for everyone. Anyone who isn’t performing will be immediately replaced. It shouldn’t come down to anyone’s individual opinions and wishes,” he added.
