Pakistan’s former captain spills the beans on some explosive conversations he had with Misbah and Inzamam.
Pakistan’s former captain spills the beans on some explosive conversations he had with Misbah and Inzamam. When his ban for match-fixing was lifted in 2015, Pakistan’s former captain Salman Butt tried several times to get back into international cricket. All of these plans failed, though. Butt did well in domestic cricket in Pakistan. In 2016, he played in the National One-Day Cup and scored 536 runs in seven games. In the T20 Cup a year later, he and Kamran Akmal put together an opening stand of 207 runs. Butt was also the player with the most runs in the 2018–19 Quaid-e-Azam One Day Cup, but he wasn’t picked for the national team.
When domestic cricket started again in Pakistan after the Covid-19 lockdown, Butt pulled out of the Qaid-e-Azam Trophy, saying he knew he doesn’t “have a future with Pakistan.”
Nearly two years later, Butt talked about what happened in an interview with ARY News. He spoke about how he talked to Misbah-ul-Haq and Inzamam-ul-Haq. Butt said neither of the two had ever given him a satisfactory answer.
Here’s what Butt said
“Everyone said that it was the management’s decision. When Misbah was captain, I talked to him and he said, ‘yaar meri koi sunta hi nahi hai.’ When he was chief selector, I met him again. He told me to perform in the department cricket. I scored 905 runs in 9 matches. I called him twice and he didn’t answer. Then I left it. I realised my performances weren’t getting valued,” Butt said.
“I asked him (Inzamam) a lot of times, but never received a satisfying answer. Sometimes, I was told, ‘yaar tum kisi bade se sifaarish karao’. But I didn’t do that.”
Butt gave a very direct answer when he was asked if references work in Pakistan cricket. “If he’s saying, it must be true. It wasn’t the case when I was captain,” he said.
Butt’s last professional game was for the Lahore Qalandars in the Pakistan Super League in March 2020. He got a job as a consultant coach for the Singapore men’s cricket team in May 2022.