I think that Taufiq Umar was unlucky to have missed out and one or two players, who shall remain nameless, lucky to have been picked for the squad that will tour Australia.
Taufiq came into international cricket with immense promise but, perhaps, he was not hungry enough and he allowed his game to drift. I think he needed guidance from his coach or senior players for he was making the same mistake over and over again, something that Yasir Hameed seems to be doing.
Apart from this there can be no serious quarrel with the squad. The selectors showed imagination in taking along Shahid Afridi who would otherwise have joined the team later for the ODI's. He provides a spinning option in a team that is thin on spinners.
No one seems to be giving Pakistan much chance against the mighty Australians. This is just as well for expectations will not be that high and there will be that much less pressure on the team. But this does not mean that the team is expected to roll over.
Both Sri Lanka and India did well enough and there is no reason why the Pakistan cannot match them and even excel them. Pakistan must arrive in a positive frame of mind and they have two weeks to get used to the conditions, which mean mainly the extra-bounce of the wickets. It means that our batsmen will have to cut out extravagant shots, which have been their undoing.
There is no better example before them than that of South Africa's Andrew Hall who is normally a lower order batsman who likes to flash his bat and have a dip. Asked to open the innings in the on-going Kanpur Test, he made the adjustment and indeed transformed himself and would have been the envy of a Geoff Boycott.
He batted with patience, as if opening the innings in a Test match was second nature to him. His instructions must have been simple: don't give your wicket away and stay at the crease. And that is exactly what he did and he batted, session after session. That's the sort of discipline we need from our batsmen. They have to play according to the team plan, presuming, of course that there is a team plan.
The Australians do a lot of homework on their opponents. They would have watched all the videos more than once and will have worked out the strong points and weak areas of every player, not just his batting and bowling but also his fielding ability. The Australians as a rule do not have an off-day in the field and if by some mischance they do, they come out stronger on the following day.
They expect their batsmen to score and the bowlers to take wickets and if they don't on a fairly regular basis, they are dropped. No one plays for Australia on reputation. Both Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne know that they cannot take their place in the side for granted.
I wrote last week about central contracts for the Pakistani players. I am not opposed to the idea in principle. Cricket is now a career and the players should become regular employees. But then, like office workers, they have to function within a service code.
A player under central contract becomes a full time employee of the PCB. Does this mean that he will have to give up his job with a department or bank or airline? Or can he hold two jobs. I assume that this has been taken into consideration and has been cleared by the present employer of the player.
I haven't taken too much interest in the central contracts but they appear to be based on some slab system with seniority as the determining factor. Frankly, I don't believe in senior and junior player. In my estimation a senior player is one who has reached his peak and is on the way down.
This may be a harsh way at looking at things. Besides, it does not always follow that experience comes with seniority. There are so many county players in England who turn out year after year with no marked improvement in their skills, just a frozen mediocrity. Nor should the fact that a player who has a central contract mean that he is an automatic choice.
We should not be too much in a hurry for central contracts based on some slab system means that some players are more equal than others though all of them are doing the same job. Nor does it follow that our senior players accept added responsibilities by helping out the newer players.
Finally there is all this fuss about walking. "The morality of cricket has undergone a change. I won't say that it is no longer a "gentleman's game" because I don't think that it ever was starting from W. G. Grace who all but invented one-upmanship in cricket. But there are the two umpires, now assisted by technology, whose job it is to adjudicate whether a batsman is out or not out. I think it is best left them. A batsman who does not walk even when he knows he is out is not being un-sporting.
Adam Gilchrist walks when he has nicked the ball but he also makes a lot of appeals for caught behind knowing that there was no nick. It all comes out in the wash. Personally, I think that is best that the umpire decides. That is what happens in a court of law. Both the plaintiff and the defendant wait for the judge to give his verdict.
