Pakistan cricket — version 0.0

PCB kept finding ways to remain controversial

Pakistan cricket remains a funny spectacle. It does not matter who is heading the most powerful sporting body in the country, all that matter is what they want to do with it.

It does not matter whether it makes any sense but all that matters is for it to make sense to them (the high-ups), regardless of the cost Pakistan cricket has to pay in the end.

Pakistan — the country — is going through a similar phase. Ever since toppling the government of Imran Khan back in March of last year, there is seemingly a constant effort from the ‘power that be’ to ensure that the future looks as dark as it probably never did for the youth who are either at the start of their professional career or are thinking of having one in the near future.

In cricket, it seems, nothing is different and it is truly representing Pakistan — not 1.0 or 2.0 but 0.0 — the oldest version of itself where hardly anything good can last as long as it should in a normal country or a society.

Sticking to cricket, things started to unfold during the time of Imran Khan as the Prime Minister. The 1992 World Cup-winning captain’s obsession with having a state-based domestic structure pushed him to hire a person outside the normal circle of ‘Yes Men’ in Wasim Khan as the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to help the more or less a dysfunctional and old chairman in Ehsan Mani.

His job description, despite his immaculate integrity, was a simple one, to ensure finding a way to do what Imran wants to be done to the domestic structure.

Wasim, accompanied by usual suspects, ended up giving everything Imran wanted with the domestic structure, similar to the one in Australia which Imran idealised and believes is the best to become successful in the sport.

There is one thing in doing things that your boss wants but in a country like Pakistan, there is a tendency of doing more than what they actually demand, just to please them.

That is exactly what Wasim and Co. did. They ended up ensuring that Pakistan will have a six-team in domestic cricket, exactly the same as Australia’s domestic structure.

They did not even have the courage to ask the all-powerful Prime Minister how talent from a 220 million population can be accommodated in a six-team system. They couldn’t even highlight that Australia’s domestic system makes sense because their population is pretty much equal to the population of Karachi only.

Despite all of that, the hiring of Wasim was a good one, not because he did everything right but because he was an honest man. He was not familiar with how things work in a politics-driven Pakistan cricket culture and made some bad moves too.

One was to appoint someone like Misbah-ul-Haq, not in one but three different roles, all at the same time. But since Wasim was a capable administrator, he ended up realizing soon that step backfired completely and that led him to move towards Mohammad Wasim for the chief selector role.

As it happens in Pakistan, good people often stay in power for a much-lesser time than they should and the same happened with Wasim as well. His time as PCB CEO came to an end with the arrival of the all-powerful Ramiz Hasan Raja.

The cricketer-turned-commentator, in his opening presser, while responding to questions from fellow media personnel, admitted that he is a ‘one-man’ show and he would like to keep it that way.

During his time, Pakistan cricket made some strides, be it good or bad, but at least some strides. The whole PSL took place for the first time in the country, the captain was made all-powerful, the chief selector was somewhat data-driven, at least by the look of it, there was consistency in the coaching department regardless of results and so on.

While those were the good things, there were some bad or rather controversial things as well. Stories of Ramiz’s interference in the broadcast was something a lot of commentators complained about, the quality of the pitches remained a hot talking point and so was the all-controversial only edition of the Junior Premier League (JPL).

But his time had to come to an end, after all his appointment was directly linked to Imran who was now out of power.

Like his captain in 1992, Ramiz’s removal from his office was also controversial. He was made aware that he will no longer hold the office in a tweet by now PCB chairman Najam Sethi, who wrote that the ‘regime’ headed by former Test opener is no more.

Ramiz’s removal was just the start of a circus, something people thought was history in a so-called ‘Naya Pakistan’. That circus now seems to be in full swing. Following his exit, the former Pakistan opener was not even allowed to collect his belongings from the PCB headquarters.

His departure would also mean the return of some old faces, especially one Shakil Sheikh who is famous for a lot of wrong things in Pakistan cricket, including encouraging politics within the team.

Sheikh is also famous for pushing his player to be included in the U19 tournament a few years back over someone like Shadab Khan but who would care about these stories when the sitting Prime Minister, his mates and others who are involved in alleged corruption of billions, are walking away with absolute impunity?

Sethi’s first move was as controversial as his arrival. He allowed the former left-arm pacer Mohammad Amir, who remains a critic of the current side after announcing his retirement during the reign of Wasim Khan, to start training at the National High-Performance Center (NHPC).

With that, news started to circulate that the tainted pacer, who even made some below-the-belt comments about the players currently playing in the national team, will soon make his comeback and wear the green jersey.

If that was not enough, the current PCB chairman made another interesting move of unsettling the bond of the national team, something you would hardly see anywhere in the world.

Sethi named opening batter Shan Masood as the vice-captain for the three-match ODI series against New Zealand.

The left-hander did not play a 50-over game for the national team since March 2019 and it was no surprise that him being named the deputy to Babar Azam would eventually intensify rumours of the star batters’ future as the leader of the pack and that’s what exactly happened. What makes this decision even worse is that all of it is done in the year of the World Cup. Unbelievable, unimaginable, unthinkable for any sane mind but that’s not what we would want to have.

On a mission to overturn everything drastically, just like the government in charge, Sethi replaced Mohammad Wasim with a tried-and-tested Haroon Rashid, who has been in similar roles more often than many people get a chance to work in their life.

Rashid will have the services of Yasir Hameed, Mohammad Sami but the most controversial appointment has to be of Kamran Akmal who is the cousin of Babar.

The former wicketkeeper-batter has been an open critique of Babar as a captain and having him in there means that the star batter will have added pressure to deal with, that too just months before the start of the mega-event.

If you think the circus was done, well you have clearly underestimated the ability of self-destroying in Pakistan. Just like the country, Sethi and co thought of another horrendous move of appointing a foreign head coach, and that too with a desperate outlook, just like the federal government who are now dealing with a similar outlook with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To replace Saqlain Mushtaq as the head coach of the team, Sethi went full in to hire Mickey Arthur. The most absurd thing was the way they went after him.

Sethi openly confirmed that they are in talks with Arthur and the former South Africa coach openly rejected the proposal.

But Sethi being Sethi went again in public and pushed the idea that they were very close to agreeing to a deal. Then came another surprising story from different sources that PCB even went as far as offering Arthur a role of online coaching.

That story was so absurd and ridiculous to a point that memes started to pop up on social media, and that too in hundreds.

But those memes aren’t as harmful as the ones we see on daily basis from the decision-makers in the PCB. They’ve truly turned the board into a place where nothing seems logical.

All that matters is to turn everything back, no matter the cost. All that matters is to ensure we go back to how we were, a circus where the old remains gold while the younger ones must look elsewhere for a better future.