Even for Pakistan, their recent administrative churn has been excessive, and the instability is reflected in the team’s performances
Osman Samiuddin09-Sep-2024The on-field reasons behind Pakistan’s recent plunge are well-documented, in both white- and red-ball cricket. In a way, though, they are a red herring because the biggest driver for those results is the mess off the field.Historically the PCB has had a well-earned reputation for dysfunctionality; the (sadly brief) bouts of sound administration are the exceptions not the rule. In its defence, this is not entirely the PCB’s doing. The board remains bound to the country’s politics. The chairman is effectively appointed by the prime minister and the premiership itself has hardly been a stable post, so… (This, by the way, is the textbook definition of political interference in all textbooks other than the ICC’s.)But even in a rich canon, the instability of the last three years – from the end of August 2021, when Ehsan Mani stepped down as board chairman – stands out. A succession of board heads, nearly a team’s worth of head coaches, enough selectors for two XIs to have a game: here, then, are the real numbers behind Pakistan cricket’s current malaise.FourChairmen or heads of board since Mani stepped down: Ramiz Raja, Najam Sethi, Zaka Ashraf, and the incumbent, Mohsin Naqvi. It’s tempting to see this as a kind of limbo dance line, each successor lower than the last, but once the bar gets this low, it doesn’t really matter.Where would you begin anyway? Ramiz’s neutering of Pakistan’s pitches was terrible, needless and deliberate. It wasn’t worse than his neutering of the executive function of the board, though, bringing in an enfeebled CEO to replace Wasim Khan and, in the process, hoarding all power unto the chair itself.Related
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Sethi took the board backwards, literally, in replacing the 2019 PCB constitution with the 2014 version. This remains a deep wound, taking a board with independent directors and a chairman with curbed powers back to the days when the chairman was the sole decision-maker. Sethi also upended the domestic structure, bringing back departmental cricket, and planted the seeds of the disjointedness seen in the current sides. All in less than six months.The less said about Ashraf the better, if only because there literally is nothing to be said about his tenure. His only aim was to somehow cling onto the position. He failed.And now Naqvi. One might think that as the interior minister of Pakistan, maybe, just maybe, he has slightly more important things to deal with than hard-selling the Champions Cup as the panacea to cure Pakistan cricket. What three new tournaments will do that the four existing ones haven’t been able to, nobody is clear about, other than bloating the domestic calendar and stretching it to nearly 12 months. Maybe, they hope, that by adding “Champions” to the name, champions will somehow be abracadabra-ed out the other end.We already know the real winners of these tournaments, though – the five team mentors who don’t coach or play (other than two) but who earn a cool PKR 5 million (about US$18,000) a month each. Not only is that more than the coaches and players in these tournaments get, it is also more than any centrally contracted player in Pakistan bar the three in the highest Category A do. It’s still not clear what, if anything, their brief is beyond “inspiring” players (this must be the magic bit).Again, it’s not just the names. Change has meant entire coaching systems and strategies being flung aside. Misbah-ul-Haq was in what we might recognise as a traditional head coach role (though he also had unprecedented influence as chief selector). Saqlain Mushtaq was coach under a chairman who didn’t hold much stock in coaches, and turned out to be more a hands-off spiritual guide. There was the short-lived return of Mickey Arthur as team director, with Grant Bradburn as the head coach. Then, in Mohammad Hafeez, the team director and head coach became one role. Now there’s no team director but there are two head coaches.There has been an eclectic support cast, including Matthew Hayden as a mentor, Adam Hollioake as batting coach, two different high-performance coaches on two successive away tours, Mohammad Yousuf as a batting coach now transitioned into a selector, and seven different bowling coaches. For a time, the manager was an empowered cricket strategist and not simply the guy who holds the passports, books the flights and makes sure shirts are tucked in at breakfast, as pretty much all previous managers were.Is it any surprise, given this churn, that players new and established look so frazzled? Who does Abdullah Shafique turn to, to claw out of the rut he has been in? Who tells Babar Azam what is going wrong and how to make it right? If the development of Pakistani bowlers is arrested across all formats, is it any surprise?One series you’re heralding a new dawn and playing the New Pakistan Way; the next, you have new management, a new captain, and it’s back to the Old Pakistan Way: an Australian whitewash.By tossing the captaincy hat between Babar Azam and Shaheen Afridi, the PCB has managed to destabilise two of the most vital players of the team•AFP/Getty ImagesFiveDifferent chief selectors. This stellar list includes Shahid Afridi (as with all the best Afridi interventions, it was short-lived), Haroon Rasheed (the new Intikhab Alam, finding a way back into any and every administration with such frequency that he’s never actually been out) and Wahab Riaz . It is as many head selectors as Sri Lanka, Australia, England and South Africa put together have had over the same period. Australia have had five different chief selectors since 1996-97. What’s more, as part of various committees (and including the chiefs) 23 different men have selected Pakistan teams since August 2021.They have tried traditional selection committees, with one head and two or three members. They had one with a chief and consultants, one of whom, for one day only, was Salman Butt (it’s okay, the other one was Kamran Akmal). One chief had to step down because of an alleged conflict of interest after it emerged that he was in business with the agent of Pakistan’s biggest players (except, 11 months on, nobody has been told what’s happening with that inquiry). Some committees have had coach and captain in it. Some have had seven members, each with a vote, but no chief. The current one has nine members, of whom four can cast a vote, with no chief.Is it surprising, then, that since August 2021 no side has used more players across all formats? India have used the same number – 66 – but have played 55 more games in doing so. In a time of three formats and multiple schedule challenges, it is natural there will be a need to use more players, to both build and use depth in the player pool. But with Pakistan it does feel very much a direct consequence of 23 different men having 23 different ideas about which players to select.Last year Inzamam-ul-Haq had to resign as Pakistan chief selector within a few months of being appointed because of a potential conflict of interest•AFP/Getty ImagesThreeFull-time captains. Other than stand-ins, Babar, Shaheen Afridi and Shan Masood have been the only full-time Pakistan captains in this period. Given the backdrop above, their own brutal history with captains (in 2010 alone, Pakistan used four), and that Australia (4), England (4), Sri Lanka (6) and Bangladesh (5) have all used more men across all formats in this period, this should be remarkable.Except that Babar being pushed into resigning as the all-format captain after the World Cup last year and giving way to Afridi in T20Is looks like the pivotal moment in the destabilising of this side. Afridi was removed after a single bilateral T20I series by a different administration than the one that had appointed him. That led to significant discontent for a bowler who was probably still smarting over the way the board had bungled his rehab from a knee injury earlier.Meanwhile, Babar returned, no doubt warier and singed by the experience. He also did with the knowledge that no matter how reactive or inert a captain he was, he had led Pakistan to that 2-0 win in Sri Lanka on his last assignment, playing the New Pakistan Way. And that now, a man averaging less than 30 with the bat after a decade of Test cricket had replaced him as captain.Somehow, one after the other, two administrations managed to unsettle two of the side’s most valuable players and, to no surprise, here both are, struggling with their games and here is Pakistan, with two official captains, looking leaderless on the field.Off it they are looking worse.