05 August 2004	Thursday	18 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

Pakistan finished top from the bottom in the "three-team" Asia Cup, yet the entire Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) management including chairman, chief executive, coach, manager and captain has gone overboard claiming the campaign as an outstanding success and predict the team to be on the verge of accomplishing greater deeds in coming months.

Such euphoria coming from the PCB officials is nothing new taking into consideration the past experience. The very same sentiments have been expressed for the past four years with not one major victory to date to the credit of the team to shout about.

To describe the trip to the pearl island a success is another crude attempt by the PCB officials to hide management's inability to put the house in order and overcome the team's frailities which were so visible in Colombo.

The fact of the matter is that the present team, despite spending huge sums of money in acquisition of dozens of foreign experts, has not what it takes to become a real threat to the dominance of Australia, the undisputed kings of world cricket.

Pakistan's problems after the end of the "golden era" of Imran Khan have been inconsistency, brittleness in batting and perennial shortcomings in ground fielding and catching. The performance in two significant outings, India and Sri Lanka, not for the umpteenth time highlighted these frailities.

The squad named to defend the Asia Cup by Wasim Bari and his co-selectors was the best available and the blame of failure lies with the players and the team management as they failed to rise to the occasion.

While the defeat against Sri Lanka was a bitter pill to swallow the loss of bonus point, so important against India, was lack of planning on part of the high-profile coach.

One swallow does not make a summer. This has been exactly the case with the Pakistan team. The PCB management is crowing over the win against India but very conveniently forgot the humiliation against Sri Lanka earlier.

It appeared that Pakistan team management's sole priority after the Sri Lankan debacle was to avoid defeat at all cost against India and winning the trophy became secondary.

As things stands today the chances of Pakistan challenging Australia in the too distant future is not on the horizon unless we produce bowlers of the calibre of great Ws Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Imran Khan and the batsmen of the standing of Javed Miandad, Salim Malik and Saeed Anwar.

With due respect Yousuf Youhana, Younis Khan, Shoaib Malik and Imran Farhat are not in the same class of above named trio while Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Sami cannot be compared with the truly world greats Ws who delivered on the field rather than blowing their own trumpets off the field.

The coming months are going to be really testing for Pakistan cricket and only the time will tell whether the present available talent has the capability to rise to the occasion and be counted on world cricket map or go down the same road as the once invincible and mighty West Indies, the new whipping boys.

Perhaps the time is right now for PCB to also engage foreign chairman and chief executive to turn things around as the present as well as past top officials not only plunged Pakistan cricket into one crisis after another but also brought country's good name into disrepute due to on and off field activities of the players and officials.