Pakistan finally won a Test after a yawning gap of nearly three years and 12 Test matches. On the face of it, the Wellington win appeared a convincing one because the Kiwis were crushed by 141 runs.

However, with our shoddy performance at Dunedin earlier, where Mohammad Yousuf and his brigade lost a battle they could have won with little more application and skill, predicting the outcome of the Test series would be foolhardy.

And while the grim battle goes on between bat and ball in the Test series, the off-field saga of Aussie tour captaincy is getting more complexed by the day.

As if Younis Khan’s ‘request for rest’ from international cricket was startling enough, we are now experiencing an agonising wait on who would be leading the Pakistan squad to a country where we have never won a Test series.

One wonders whether Younis’ astonishing absence and the subsequent reaction to it by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) can be rated as acts of professionalism by any standard.

A recent media report suggested that makeshift skipper Yousuf, assuming himself to be the captain-designate for Australia, has already proposed changes in the team for the challenging assignment following the mysterious silence of Younis who also missed the recent Quaid-i-Azam Trophy games despite chief selector Iqbal Qasim’s insistence on featuring in the same.

Needless to say, if the hastily-made leadership arrangement for the New Zealand Tests is persevered with, the move will certainly have its ramifications given the complexity of the present national cricket set-up.

Due to this captaincy crisis, Pakistan cricket seems to be in a shambles. Sometimes Read more…

Administrator PAK vs NZ, Pakistan Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Dunedin, Ijaz Butt, Iqbal Qasim, Mohammad Yousuf, New Zealand, Pakistan, PCB, Quaid-i-Azam, Sri Lanka, UAE, Younis Khan, Younus Khan

Pakistan cricket is not alien to crisis. From time to time we have experienced it in every era and the present one is not any different to others.

The reason mainly being poor governance by those at the helm who had little or no ability at all to control the situation and, to save their own skin, they would succumb to all kind of pressures.

Sadly, a great majority of those administrators were forced upon the system to run the game as they pleased. The present lot is not any different.

Already a year in the office, they have neither managed to have a constitution nor have been able to convince their critics about the irregularities in maintaining accounts.

This is a huge scam and even the governing body of the PCB, which is supposed to bring some sort of transparency in the working of the board, has so far failed to make their presence felt.

The few voices of dissent from a couple of members from time to time in the meetings did little but not enough to go past the deaf ears of the PCB chairman who could have done the game some service had he not so far resorted to arbitrary decisions.

The appointment of Mohammad Yousuf as the captain for the tour of New Zealand has also come about in a similar fashion.

The members of the governing body once again have been made to look like the ‘dead ducks’. Their feathers have long been clipped from the time they joined the board and the future members will not be any different.

In a crisis like the one which resulted in Younis Khan quitting the captaincy and the tour, strong management should have made sure to shove off all the nonsense that has been going around within the team and should have made sure to back their captain to set an example Read more…

Administrator Pakistan Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Hafeez Kardar, Imran Khan, Karachi, Majid Khan, Miandad, Mohammad Yousuf, Mushtaq Mohammad, New Zealand, Pakistan, PCB, Wasim Bari, Younis Khan, Zaheer Abbas

You can always bet that Pakistan cricket will never be short of controversies. The rumpus created by Younis Khan’s decision to abdicate the reins of leadership for the sake of ‘taking time off from the sport’ is simply too hard to digest at a juncture when the national team is embarking upon an assignment which is going to be a tough test of its character in the coming months.

It’s unfortunate that Younis, who otherwise is one of the most decent sportsmen with no malice towards anyone, has to give in to the player-power politics that has been one of the reasons why Pakistan cricket is notorious for its inconsistency and unpredictability.

Critics, of course for the time being, are going to have a field day until the dust settles over the latest controversy.

Ijaz Butt, the Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, in an abrupt statement on Wednesday announced Mohammad Yousuf as the successor to Younis for the New Zealand Tests.

He also remarked that the cricket board had no objection to Younis asking to be rested from the New Zealand tour.

But the PCB chief was unwilling to admit that Pakistan cricket, not for the first time, is facing serious crisis.

The revolt against captaincy has happened on several occasions in the past and the current scenario appears to be no different as like in the past there appears to be no strict team management to curb this disruptiveness.

Javed Miandad had to relinquish the job shortly after the Australian tour in 1981-82 when almost the entire squad, instigated by Majid Khan and vice-captain Zaheer Abbas, went Read more…

Administrator Pakistan Abu Dhabi, Black Caps, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, icl, Majid Khan, Miandad, Misbah-ul Haq, New Zealand, PCB, Twenty20, Wasim Akram, Younus Khan, Yousuf, Zaheer Abbas

Pakistan is providing teenage players to international cricket for decades. First major instance is that of Mushtaq Muhammad, playing against mighty West Indies of Gary Sobers at a tender age of 15 years. The vibrancy of our youth cricket has flourished with the passage of time. Recent prime examples are fast bowler Muhammad Aamer and batsman Umar Akmal: perhaps best two teenage players of the recently concluded ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa.

This potential reflects enormity of Pakistan cricket talent. But unfortunately the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is not forthcoming to nurture this youth talent at domestic level. Domestic cricket, and more particularly, youth cricket is a prime prey to the PCB ad hoc policies and plans. PCB top brass always engages itself more passionately with international cricket and give comparatively little attention to development dynamics of domestic cricket. How best domestic cricket is to be scheduled and regulated so that new talent is harnessed to the optimum is not a major concern with our cricket bosses.

To sustain this premise the domestic cricket calendar for the year 2009-2010 can be taken as the best example to elaborate the prevalent ad hocism. The inter-district senior tournament, to be contested by 82 grassroots teams, has been postponed. Instead, the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, most important domestic event, comprising 22 regional and department teams has started from October 10. The inter-region under-19 three-day tournament, also an important youth event, has been deleted this year. During the last few years, this tournament preceded regional academies, of 45 days duration, to be supervised by regional coaches and availed by 275 boys, performing well in the Inter-district under-19 tournament.

This is really absurd. The domestic schedule should start from grassroots: senior inter-district and inter-district under-19 tournaments. Regional teams are selected or should be selected from those players who perform well in inter-district senior and regional under-19 one-day Read more…

Administrator Pakistan Ahmad Shehzad, Azeem Ghuman, Babar Azam, Blogs.CMDN.com, Champions Trophy, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Domestic cricket, Faraz Ali, Gary Sobers, Mohammad Aamer, Pakistan, PCB, Quaid-e-Azam, Shahryar Ghani, Umar Akmal, Umar Amin, Usman Qadir, West Indies

ALL is not well at the Pakistan Cricket Board. The PCB’s workings have never been a byword for stability but the flux seen these days is remarkable even by the board’s standards.

Within a space of three months, two senior members of the PCB set-up have resigned while another has been sacked. Outspoken chief selector Abdul Qadir was the first to quit, citing ‘unacceptable’ interference in selection matters. The second resignation came from National Cricket Academy director and former captain Aamer Sohail. It is believed the PCB chairman’s apparent failure to give him a free hand in running the academy and starting new development programmes convinced Mr Sohail that it was time to go.

Meanwhile, reports of chief operating officer Saleem Altaf’s increasingly tense relationship with chairman Ijaz Butt had been doing the rounds for quite some time. He was dismissed a week ago.

Ijaz Butt, who has also been in slanging matches with the Senate’s standing committee on sports, is the central figure in this sorry saga. His attitude towards the media has occasionally bordered on hostility and he is not averse either to making inconsistent statements.

It doesn’t end there. In the aftermath of the attack on the Sri Lankan team, Mr Butt lashed out at match referee Chris Broad who had claimed that security for players and officials was lax in Lahore. Resorting to language unbecoming, he called Broad a liar even though the massive security lapse was apparent to all and was subsequently accepted by Pakistani officials.

Mr Butt may have also botched Pakistan’s chances of holding its World Cup matches at neutral venues. He allegedly became stroppy with the ICC and alienated the other co-hosts by demanding that the whole tournament be moved out of the subcontinent. Pakistan Read more…

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Drumbeats of discontent against Ejaz Butt’s stewardship of the Pakistan Cricket Board are becoming louder and louder. When he was appointed PCB chairman, back in October 2008, the news was received with a sigh of relief.

Throughout this decade, Pakistan’s cricket management has suffered under the misguided leadership of elitist generals, patrician diplomats, and self-absorbed opportunists. Now here was a man with Test cricket credentials and a decent record of being a business leader to boot. As many in our media and cricket circles saw it at the time, after a long interval the right kind of person had finally been appointed to the chairmanship of the PCB.

It was not long before hopes began to sour. Soon after assuming office, Butt made loud noises about involving some of our great ex-cricketers in the affairs of the Board, hiring Javed Miandad as director-general to popular acclaim. Yet he failed to mediate between his advisers and left a leadership vacuum precipitating Miandad’s acrimonious departure from the PCB. When Miandad, no slouch at political manoeuvring, got himself reinstated within two months, the whole mess became a joke and Butt cut a sorry figure.

Another of Butt’s high-profile appointments was Aamir Sohail, who was made director of the National Cricket Academy in November 2008. He never settled into the role and quit eight months later. Sohail’s public statement at the time was that he had resigned due to ‘personal reasons’ but it is no secret that he had a testy relationship with Ejaz Butt throughout.

Then, of course, there was the embarrassment surrounding Abdul Qadir’s peculiar tenure as chief selector. He also took over in November 2008, announcing with enthusiasm and Read more…

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When will we see PCB hogging the headlines next? By tomorrow, today, or may be the very next moment. They are there, everywhere - dominating the media buzz, finding themselves in news. And rarely for the right reasons.

The Board’s work culture is so unpredictable that it ends up becoming the butt of jokes and subject to light-hearted betting among squabbling friends. “He’s hired!” “Guess who will be fired next?” “In how many days the newly formed committee will be dissolved?” And what not!

Yes, PCB is the most vulnerable Cricket Board amongst all the existing ones and you would scarcely find anyone having a different view. Not that the body intends to do so, it is just so effortless on their part. Entertaining! Yes, they are. But, only for others. If you look at the routine cold wars, toppling of committees, appointments and re-appointments, hiring and firing, it depicts their boredom owing to the lack of cricket on their soil. That, to such an extent that it’s making them work really hard on areas other than the game.

The organization is always at the receiving end, being hit by bouncers from all quarters – cricketing or non-cricketing. And the recent one being Aamer Sohail’s resignation from Read more…

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For better part of its life, Pakistan Cricket has been a rollercoaster touching peaks of success one day only to taste the depths of ignominy without much of a delay. Before you have finished celebrating the team’s success in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, there is always a thought at the back of the mind that it will not take long for the boys to shoot themselves in the foot. That being so, the quick transformation from the ecstasy at Lords to the sorrow at Galle should have surprised few.

While one can put off dissecting the team performance till the end of the Test series, there were a few souls who couldn’t wait that long. Abdul Qadir was one. The former chief selector didn’t waste a minute in going public with his thoughts about mala fide selection policy. He had recently found the egg on his face in the wake of team’s victory at the Twenty20 World Cup, so it was understandable that he didn’t want to delay his outburst this time because the second test was to start in a few days’ time and nobody, including Abdul Qadir, cold predict how the team would play; or where exactly the rollercoaster would be this time: on a high or a low. Also pitching in with his load of rubbish was Shoaib Akhtar, the man who at one point in time used to have the potential to develop into a decent bowler, but the showman in him never allowed the individual to make the most of what he had. His recently published remarks have caused considerable humour among cricket followers who must thank him for giving them something to laugh about in the wake of the Galle disappointment.

For starters, he said he was fit! One wonders what his definition of fitness happens to be, but it has been a long time since anybody in the world saw a professionally fit Shoaib Akhtar on any field of play anywhere in the world in any format of the game. The last time he turned out for Pakistan was just 10 weeks ago during the one-day series against Australia in the UAE. He cut a sorry figure. He was terribly overweight. There was so much flab bulging out of his trousers that he was struggling to keep his shirt tucked in. He was huffing, puffing and panting like a sprinter who had been made to run the marathon by an angry coach. Read more…

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Pakistan’s opportunities to win both matches in this series illustrate the fascination of Test cricket but were false hopes. Test cricket is an examination of skill way beyond the Twenty20 variety. A win in this series would have been even more remarkable than the events in England, and Pakistan fans should reserve their judgment.

The fundamental problem for Pakistan’s players is their lack of international cricket, and in particular Test cricket, over the last 18 months. There is no substitute for match practice and Pakistan’s cricketers have suffered. Add to this an inadequate domestic structure and you have the recipe for the kind of failures that Younis Khan’s team has just experienced.

Clearly, there are areas for improvement, and they are the same ones that have been discussed for a decade. An unsure and unsettled opening partnership. A middle order that fires sporadically but rarely when it matters. And a collective psychology and spirit that can turn defeat into victory rather than the other way round.

Younis will work on these areas. He will be bitterly hurt by these defeats and the failures of his senior colleagues, players he should be able to rely upon. Read more…

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