The biggest reason for Pakistan’s inconsistent performance has always been poor management and most of the time it is hard to fathom anything the cricket board does.
For the longest time Chairmanship of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has been awarded to allies, friends, and relatives of the ruling party each one of whom experimented with domestic formats, selection committees, coaches, captains, batting orders, disciplinary actions, training facilities and even PCB’s constitution.
In the past 10 years the following have attempted to manage PCB:
- Mr. Tauqir Zia – A retired general disposed of by Gen. Musharraf. His achievements include pampering Shoaib Akhtar, ensuring his son played international cricket for Pakistan, an unnecessary indoor training facility and a TV rights controversy with a private channel.
- Mr. Shaheryar Khan – A retired diplomat who was friends with the dictator. His achievements include overseeing the Oval fiasco which resulted in Pakistan losing a Test match due to forfeiture and a moron called Darryl Hair.
- Mr. Naseem Ashraf – Some old guy who liked bowling in PCB’s training facility meant for the national team, he disappeared soon as Gen. Musharraf stepped down. He has the honor of travelling the most as Chairman at PCB’s expense. His achievements include pretending to know a little bit about cricket.
- Mr. Ijaz Butt – He played the last of his 8 test matches in 1962 and took over PCB when he was only 70 years young. Since he is currently in-charge of the chaos let us discuss his work in a bit more detail.
In all honesty on paper Mr. Butt is more qualified to be the head of PCB than any of the other gentlemen listed above. Following his playing career Mr. Butt was involved with cricket administration and served as Secretary of PCB and President of Lahore City Cricket Association. However, his appointment as Chairman was primarily due to his connection with a minister of the current government. That fact could have been over looked if he had proved himself a better administrator since he understood Pakistan’s cricketing culture much better than any of the imported Chairmen.
However, that wasn’t to be, Mr. Butt’s administration has failed PCB on many fronts causing a lot of distress to die-hard cricket fans like myself, just a few are listed below:
- Pakistan lost its position as co-host of the 2011 world cup, this alone was worth a few million dollars.
- Abruptly fired Jeff Lawson as coach and handed the team to the way over-the-hill Intikhab Alam.
- Failed to develop a management team and constantly had public differences with other prominent members such as Javed Miandad, Aamir Sohail and Abdul Qadir.
- England was awarded the undeserved victory once again for the Oval fiasco of 2006.
- Failed to form any alliances at the ICC governing body level and couldn’t earn the respect of the other members of ICC.
- Developed personal differences with players, currently Younis Khan arguably Pakistan’s best available batsman is out of the national squad because of Mr. Butt.
The biggest failure he has had is on the team management front, which should have been his strongest suit as a former player. Much like other Chairmen he did not deal with ‘player-power’ issue and could not maintain any discipline in the team and there were 3 groups at all times within the outfit.
Team leaders kept changing more frequently than any other major team, Mr. Butt’s tenure started in October 2008 with Shoaib Malik as captain, then Younis Khan took over, Mohammad Yusuf was then chosen to lead Pakistan to Australia, next Shahid Afridi became captain who stepped down after one test in England, and then puppy-faced Salman Butt was thrown into the fire. Each of the captains was removed because of non-cooperation from fellow players.
Younis Khan openly expressed that he had lost control over the team, and then after the disastrous tour of Australia Mohammad Yousuf had to disclose that Shoaib Malik’s group was making his life miserable. Finally, Mr. Butt decided to take action against the miscreants, Shoaib Malik, Rana Navaid, Younis khan, and Mohammad Yousuf were banned from playing for Pakistan and heavy fines were levied against Kamran Akmal, Umar Akmal and Shahid Afridi. The disciplinary actions were well supported by former players, but as expected within a short period of time all the actions were reversed under political pressures and the current Pakistan team has all of these players except for Younis and Rana.
All of this drama has turned Pakistan into laughingstock of the cricketing world. During this time Pakistan has only won matches due exceptional performances by individual players, just like the last test agains Australia in July 2010 where the bowlers bundled out the opposition for 88 runs, somehow once again this was hailed as the 'dawn of a new era'.
Currently Pakistan is playing a test series against England and the first match has already been lost quite badly. But the board seems reluctant in addressing the actual issue. The all powerful group in the team is going to ensure that Salman Butt fails as captain so that the leadership can either go to Shoaib Malik or Kamran Akmal.
The good thing for Mr. Butt is that he is still in office and has the chance to do a few things right. Besides doing everything else that he needs to, if Pakistan team has to get better in the short run Mr. Butt must do the following:
- Bring Younis (Ave. 50.09) and Yousuf (Ave. 53.07) back unconditionally, because clearly Azhar Ali and Umar Amin are not ready for the job yet.
- Immediately remove Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal and Umar Akmal from the team, all three of them are out of form and are causing nothing but trouble for the captain.
- Provide Salman Butt the support that he needs to control this team.
- Danesh Kaneria is out of form but should be kept with the squad and it must be borne in mind that his figures over the past two years have been ruined by the dropped catches and missed stumpings by the wicket-keeper.
- Stop making erratic decisions.
According to recent news Yousuf is being sent to England it is not clear if he will play the second test or not. With the looks of things the team might do better if one of the players comes up with an exceptional performance with the bat or ball but we cannot expect any kind of consistency from this squad.
Second test starts on August 6, I will be prepared mentally for another disappointment but will watch the scores with as much optimism as I possibly can but that’s just me!!
