Afghanistan’s wicketkeeper-opener Mohammad Shahzad was recently replaced in the ICC World Cup 2019 squad owing to an injury he sustained during the warm up game against Pakistan before the start of the tournament.

Shahzad participated in his team’s first two fixtures against Australia and Sri Lanka and seemingly aggravated the injury to his knee during the two games, where he also kept wickets and has now been ruled out of the tournament. The ICC has confirmed that the Event Technical Committee of the tournament has approved Ikram Ali Khil as a replacement player for Shahzad for the remainder of the tournament.

However, if some sources are to be believed, Mohammad Shahzad himself is surprised at being replaced, despite practicing with the team for their match against New Zealand and deemed himself fully fit. It remains unclear what circumstances led him to be replaced by team management.

Sources claim that Shahzad has been a casualty of the internal skirmishes of Afghanistan team dressing room over the captaincy. It has to be mentioned here that Gulbadin Naib was named the captain of the ODI a month before the World Cup 2019 started, as the Afghanistan Cricket Board replaced Asghar Afghan as skipper in all the three formats, making Rahmat Shah the Test captain and Rashid Khan the T20 captain.

Senior players like Rashid and Mohammad Nabi took to Twitter slamming the board for this decision, as they found it odd to replace a captain who had been at the helm for four years and took the team to Test status and various other important victories in that period.