? England bowler is free to join another county
? Yorkshire say lack of team ethic contributed to exit
Yorkshire have attempted to justify their decision to release Ajmal Shahzad by claiming the England seamer is not a team player. "Cricket is a team game and Yorkshire is bigger than everybody," said Colin Graves, the county's chairman and financial backer who was also critical of Shahzad after the team were relegated last autumn.
"I am not prepared to have somebody playing for Yorkshire who does not want to be part of the team. All the comments I have heard from Ajmal are about him, not about the team. But how many matches has he won for Yorkshire?"
The 26-year-old is expected to join another county on loan before the start of the next round of Championship matches with Lancashire widely regarded as the favourites.
Graves met with Shahzad and his agent, Neil Fairbrother, earlier this week. "I decided the best thing to do was to bring this to a head," the chairman added. "I listened to everybody - I sat quietly for 40 minutes which is unusual for me - and at the end of the day I turned round and said there was no way forward. We were back where we were last season, everybody else was wrong and Ajmal had his own ideas.
"He was unhappy with the situation last year on the coaching side and we are three matches into this year, with a new set-up, and we still have a problem. We decided it was the best thing, if he didn't want to be around next year, and he was unhappy this year, that he should leave. We don't want ongoing management problems with one person."
Martyn Moxon, the former England opener who was Yorkshire's head coach last year but has now moved to a managerial role leaving the team in the hands of the former Australia bowler Jason Gillespie, said: "I am absolutely gutted that we are losing somebody with Ajmal's potential. I have told him how highly I rate him many times. We have tried to do everything we can do to accommodate him and make him happy playing his cricket at Yorkshire. However we feel that the issue has gone beyond [being] repairable.
"This is all about Ajmal's cricket and where he wants to pursue his career. The club and the staff have bent over backwards for several years now to try to satisfy Ajmal and how he wants to play his cricket but it has become clear that we will not get the best out of him at Yorkshire.
"Obviously when there is a parting of the ways then something is not right. It is about how he sees himself as a bowler. How we see him as a cricketer is exactly the same as the England management see him. Sometimes Ajmal doesn't agree with that. He has very strong views on how he sees himself. He wants to be doing lots of stuff. The last thing that a team needs is a player who is unhappy.
"Jason Gillespie has very strong ideas about what he wants the bowlers to do. If one bowler strays away from that plan, that bowler is not a team player. That is what we can't afford. There is no one person bigger than the team. We saw in 2010 when we were a tight unit we did well. When you have one or two people not singing from the same hymn sheet you have a problem. I was hoping that Jason would be able to come in and give Ajmal the backing, the encouragement, the advice and the nous that he wants, but he is a strong character and he has his own views."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/03/ajmal-shahzad-yorkshire
World Cup 2018 Beach holidays US healthcare Redrow Property Energy efficiency
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento