PAKISTAN. This is one team that is almost always in the throes of a crisis. If it is not Shoaib Akhtar’s antics, it is Mohd Asif’s brush with drugs. And if it is not Afridi’s ball-biting binge, it is Kamran Akmal’s domestic troubles spilling on to the playing field and hampering him from giving his best behind the stumps.
And, it’s also not the players alone, who are stumbling from one crisis to another. The PCB has no clear policy in place. Everytime the team performs badly, they institute a probe. Coaches are sacked, new ones inducted. Today, Javed Miandad is their advisor. Tomorrow, Waqar Younus is the mentor. And, day after tomorrow, Akram is consultant. Now Qadir is the chief selector. Shortly afterwards it is Mohsin Khan. Today, Intikhab Alam is the coach. Tomorrow, it is Ijaz Ahmed. It appears even the PCB does not know what it is doing half the time. One kneejerk reaction after the other. So much so, that the figurative PCB knee must be in severe need of an immediate operation.
Some years ago, the Pakistan playing XI had as many as nine former captains. Even this one had four (Younis Khan, Mohd Yousuf, Shoaib Malik and Shahid Afridi). Shoaib Akhtar wanted to lead the side. Kamran Akmal is not averse to being captain. Umar Akmal was being talked about as a future captain.
Almost every player has been at loggerheads with the PCB at some point of time or the other. Shoaib Akhtar feels he has been badly treated. Mohd Asif feels the Board has not supported him enough. Abdur Razzaq harbours ill-will towards the Board. Salman Butt and Imran Farhat have had their share of troubles with the PCB. Rashid Latif and Sarfaraz Nawaz always keep threatening that they will spill more beans about the match-fixing days. The team loses to Ireland in the World Cup qualifying stages to be knocked out of the tournament and coach Bob Woolmer dies under mysterious circumstances in Kingston… It can go on and on and can become a whole litany of disasters against this set-up.
I have been to Pakistan for a cricket tour and found the place to be extremely friendly. Their cricketers are quite approachable and their former players always willing to talk to the media. I was also there at the Pakistan team hotel (Pegasus) in Kingston, Jamaica when Woolmer died and saw how the players went about the whole business of having their fingerprints taken by the police and answered questions from sleuths of the Scotland Yard. So, they are used to controversy. It is nothing new for them. Perhaps, they even revel in it. It is when everything is going along smoothly – which in Pakistan cricket is seldom – that they are ill at ease. Show them a controversy and they are all for it.
They have endured isolation from the cricket world. No team wants to tour their volatile land. They have forgotten what home advantage means. The most lucrative league in the world – IPL – does not want to touch them with a ten-foot pole. Yet, they have managed to perform in difficult circumstances and surprised everyone with their T20 World Cup win in England last year.
Even now, I feel, these players will take all these bans as part of everyday life and jog along. (Although Younis and Yousuf were sure to have challenged their bans in court, which they should have – if the said bans hadn’t been lifted after barely a day that is). They might even do quite well at the upcoming T20 World Cup in the West Indies with some new youngsters coming in. These Pakistani players are used to adversity. It’s the PCB instead that should take most of the blame.
Cricket cannot be run like a military regime, which is what the PCB is trying to do. If – for instance – Umar Gul heaves his way to a half-century coming in at number ten in the batting order, it does not mean that he should be sent to open the innings in the next match. This is the kind of crooked logic on which the PCB tries to work.
Cricket is not a theatre of war where you can order court-martials and inquiries at the drop of a hat. But, in Pakistan, everything is run by military diktat and they want to run cricket that way too. People like Pervez Musharraf (in the past) and Asif Zardari run the PCB. So, it is only natural that they offer military solutions – the ones they are used to – to cricketing problems.
Pakistan team consists of a very talented bunch of players. But PCB runs like a military establishment. The players need cricketing solutions to their problems. Sadly, the PCB is dishing out military treatment to them. In this case, the Pakistan Board is not only shooting itself in the foot, but all over the body too.
