Hassan Cheema

Pakistan's vicious circle of failure

Their ODI series loss to Bangladesh highlights several failings - the biggest being that man for man their best XI was a lesser team

Hassan Cheema
Hassan Cheema
27-Apr-2015
Pakistan's best have proved to be just not good enough  •  Getty Images

Pakistan's best have proved to be just not good enough  •  Getty Images

And so it begins. Another cycle of repair, another "rebuilding project" where judgements shouldn't be passed as the team is in "transition", another odyssey to nowhere. It would be easy to fall into the trap of these words and phrases if we had not lived through all of this before. Some argue that the Pakistan team is in a downward spiral that cannot be stopped. Others suggest that a four-year cycle keeps repeating itself. Both, it seems, are correct. Trends now shine brighter than the neon lights of Tokyo, but they are trends the Pakistan cricket fraternity continues to ignore.
The most obvious trend is to do with the captaincy. Over the past four years everyone from Mohammad Hafeez to Umar Amin and Sohaib Maqsood have been lined up as alternatives to Misbah - in the end the choice was between Sarfraz Ahmed and Azhar Ali, not because they did anything special, but because all the other potential captains had failed in ways that Azhar and Sarfraz haven't (yet). This was not Virat Kohli or Steven Smith taking over after captaining a multinational T20 team, among others; these were men who, after a decade of domestic cricket, were not first-choice captains for their departmental teams. This was scraping the bottom of the barrel and proclaiming whatever came out to be gold.
Still, this pair is perhaps more qualified to lead than Shoaib Malik or Salman Butt were, for instance - so it isn't as bad as what we've come to expect from the PCB.
Following defeat, the blame will fall on the shoulders of Sarfraz and Azhar, but can one really blame them? It wasn't as if the PCB had lined them up, told their departments to give them the captaincy experience they require. Nothing of the sort happened. Over the past two seasons the two have been captained by at least six different players. This wasn't some deeply thought-out strategy that has come to fruition. This was the PCB doing what the PCB does.
Having to choose between Sarfraz and Azhar is like scraping the bottom of the barrel and proclaiming whatever came out to be gold
But it's really the Tale of the Senior Player where the sense of déjà vu really hits you in the face. Every World Cup in this century has led to an exodus of senior players who had kept going at it a bit too long; cases where they would have been better served retiring when they still had something left, but the lure of a World Cup kept them hanging on till they were humiliated in the tournament itself.
Much like everything else in Pakistan cricket, this tendency is often born of the desire to emulate Imran Khan. After all, he too was well past his best by the time 1992 came around, but guiding a group as the senior statesman and taking all the credit washed away his previous sins. That is the dream the senior Pakistan player hangs on to. That is what kept all since Imran going - from the corpses of the '90s in the 2003 World Cup, to the trio of Pathans in the 2015 World Cup. And while the likes of Wasim Akram or Misbah may have escaped without their reputations greatly damaged, most tend to follow Imran's great contemporary Javed Miandad - like his 1996, and Younis Khan's 2015, what is supposed to be a last hurrah ends up only tarnishing legacies.
And another cycle begins. After every disappointing tournament the PCB and its selectors finally turn their attentions to the domestic game: a chance to finally replace the greats who held on for too long.
In the first full tour Pakistan have embarked upon or hosted following the 2003, 2007 and 2011 World Cups, they have had a total of 15 different players donning the green for the first time, across formats. With Mohammad Rizwan and Saad Nasim that number is now up to 17. And the pair shouldn't harbour much hope for great careers; of those 15 men who debuted in such series, only three went on to play the following World Cup. The revolution lasts only as long as the city isn't on fire.
Instead, what we get at the first sign of trouble is what was on offer with the new ball in the third ODI against Bangladesh. After all the talk of new eras and giving youth a chance, when push came to shove, Pakistan's opening bowlers were Mohammad Hafeez and Umar Gul.
Pakistan lost an ODI series to Bangladesh, but it's not nearly as big a crisis as the bloviating diehards would have you believe. The bigger issue for Pakistan ought to be that man-for-man their best XI was a lesser team than Bangladesh's. This is what the Pakistan cricket fraternity refuses to believe - the product of all they do, whether that is first-class cricket, club cricket or anything lower, is now worse than a team they condescendingly refer to as a standard they don't want to fall to.
The top six that Pakistan played in this ODI series was from among the dozen or so best batsmen that the domestic system has to offer - in stats as well as reputation - and yet 250 was as much as they could get to. This team, which was embarrassed, was picked on merit, not by currying favour. These were the best products of a decrepit system that has regressed from the days when all its best players played county cricket. This is the fruit of our labours.
So this could be the bottom of the pit. The Pakistani suits need to finally wake up. What is likely to happen, though, is what always happens. Tried and tested failures will be brought back. How else do you explain Kamran Akmal and Shoaib Malik training at the National Cricket Academy over the past fortnight?

Hassan Cheema is a sports journalist, writer and commentator, and co-hosts the online cricket show Pace is Pace Yaar. @mediagag