A dark day in Pakistan’s cricket history
By Kamran Abbasi
KINGSTON (Jamaica), March 18: Pakistan crashed out of the 2007 World Cup with a humiliating performance against the leprechauns of Ireland. Saturday the 17th of March will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of Pakistan cricket. It certainly made this Pakistan’s worst World Cup. The proud history created by cricketing heroes like Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis has been dragged through the mud of Montego Bay.
The cricketing tragedy was dimmed by the human tragedy of the shocking death of Bob Woolmer. Pakistan’s coach was fundamentally a decent man, who wanted to achieve great success with Pakistan, a team he viewed as brimful of talent. But his inability to stop Pakistan’s rapid decline over the last year meant he would not have continued beyond this tournament. Even Woolmer’s expertise in coaching failed to find a solution to Pakistan’s problems of opening, batting on seaming tracks, and fielding.
Now Inzamam-ul-Haq is under immense pressure to resign. The World Cup made a hero out of Inzamam the boy. It has brought humiliation to Inzamam the captain. There seems little logic to allowing him to continue as captain in either form of the game, an earth-shattering end to the ambitions of a man who wanted to emulate Imran Khan.
The responsibility for this national disaster does not stop with Inzamam but goes right to the top, taking in the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board and its patron.
The deepening gloom of a Jamaican evening and helpful umpiring were not enough to get Pakistan off the hook against an Irish team that showed more spirit than Pakistan have been able to produce all tournament. On St Patrick’s Day, a national holiday in Ireland, Pakistan followed up their gift to the host nation with another donation to their opponents.
Pakistan’s bowlers struggled manfully to retrieve another hopeless situation but lacked the killer touch to finish off a team of amateurs. Their cause was not helped by the absence of Danish Kaneria, picked as a match-winner but left out of a do-or-die encounter against batsmen unfamiliar with legspin.
But the crisis had been created by another inept display from Pakistan’s criticised openers and celebrated middle order. Heightening confusion and lack of a clear strategy have engulfed Pakistan cricket over the last six months, incidentally since the elevation of Dr Nasim Ashraf to board chairman. While top teams like Australia and South Africa have known their ideal one-day combination for many months and only fine-tuned them over recent weeks, Pakistan’s selection has been haphazard and often devoid of logic. The strategy of the team management has been usurped by the interference of the PCB.
The injury fiasco and doping saga have shown the PCB in the worst possible light and drawn attention to the lack of unified vision among senior members of the cricket board, selectors and team management. Off the field, Pakistan cricket has displayed incompetence. On the field, Pakistan cricket has displayed a lack of guts and a lethargy that was thought impossible among international sportsmen.
Clearly, Inzamam failed to inspire his charges. Inzamam’s low-key style of captaincy sits uncomfortably with the Pakistani psyche, and his constant passing on of responsibility to the will of Allah has become an embarrassment. What more can be said of a captain who chose to bat at number 5 against an associate member of the ICC when his team required him to lead from the front?
The worst aspect has been that Pakistan have made the same mistakes over and over again. The problem of finding an opening partnership to replace Saeed Anwar and Aamir Sohail remains just that several years after their retirement. Pakistan’s master batsmen seem unable to cope with conditions that offer the slightest swing and seam. At times of pressure, the batsmen crumble, failing to take responsibility. The team’s fielding resembles a bunch of geriatrics out for an evening stroll. Even the famous intervention of Jonty Rhodes failed to have an effect, with Inzamam commenting that Rhodes taught the team all the wrong things and left. Those same “incorrect” methods look to be working a treat for South Africa, a team full of energy and commitment to self-improvement.
The one outstanding achievement of the Inzamam-Woolmer era is that Pakistan’s cricket is much more consistent than it ever was. No longer the periods of brilliance punctuated by a flash of recklessness. Consistent failure has become a norm.
Pakistan cricket requires a root and branch reform that sees a new captain, coach, selection committee, chairman of the board and his colleagues, and a new patron. Merit must replace nepotism and favouritism, a proper constitution must replace ad-hocism. These demands are not new. They have been recommended since the slide began in the mid-1990s but they have not been heeded. Now Pakistan finds itself at the bottom of international cricket’s pecking order.
The politicisation of cricket in Pakistan is a major handicap to its development, and the president’s personal selection of his pals to the post of the chairman and the media manager of the cricket team have emphasised how flawed the system is. Both the chairman and the media manager have become a laughing stock at home and abroad, and don’t reflect well on the president’s ability to choose his lieutenants wisely.
The era of Inzamam has been a contradiction to the Pakistani mindset, a defensive and passive outlook that has sucked the passion out of the team’s cricket. Pakistan cricket must return to the values that made it great: aggression, passion and fearlessness. And it must start now.
With India on the brink of elimination as well, the giants of Asian cricket are finally about to pay for their arrogance and decadence with four years of wound licking.
http://www.dawn.com/2007/03/19/top15.htm
