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January 30th, 1999, Javed Miandad walks out into the balcony and waves at Shahid Khan Afridi to calm down. Miandad is all too familiar with the pressures and emotions dripping down Afridi’s helmet. The last time Pakistan visited India was over 12 years ago and Miandad was run out on 94 at this very ground. Afridi adheres to his coach’s advice for a change and points his bat to the dressing room as he reaches the three figure mark in only his second Test match.
The following evening Miandad leads Pakistan to a victory lap around a packed Chennai audience. The gracious applause of the 50,000 fans would be heard by Sachin Tendulkar for years to come, or perhaps he would forever endure the echoes of silence that had come at the fall of his wicket a little earlier in the evening.
Pakistan won two out three Test matches beyond enemy lines and through Miandad’s tactful gamesmanship had kept their arch rival out of the finals of the Asian Test Championship. They returned home not just as victors but as men who had hoisted the flag of peace across the border and set the stage for political diplomacy that should have followed.
Three months later Javed Miandad was sacked as coach and the breathtakingly beautiful Kashmiri district of Kargil turned into a turf-war. Meanwhile, the two adversaries prepared for the World Cup being held in the country that had pulled out its forces half a century earlier and left behind a sub-continent that was divided, yet bounded in more ways than one, Kashmir was just part parcel.
Miandad’s departure as coach came with all sorts of rumours. Media reported a fall-out with senior players due to ego battles and disputes over prize money. Miandad believed that the bounty should be equally shared with the coach. Some reports also suggested that Miandad was angry about suspected match-fixing in a pre World Cup game against England in Sharjah.
Mushtaq Mohammad replaced Miandad as coach for the World Cup, only to hand over his duties to Wasim Raja after two months.
Right from when Hanif Muhammad blocked Abdul Hafeez Kardar’s comeback to the national team and Kardar returned the favour by allegedly ending Hanif’s career when he became an administrator, to the recent spat between Waqar Younis and Shahid Afridi. The script usually follows the long tradition of ex-players returning to the fray in management roles to strive for the same power they enjoyed as cricketers or misemploy the authority they never had as one.
While Pakistan continued its customary roles of coaching through the 90’s, the world was entering into a new age. Australian and English coaches in particular had taken the lead in exploring the vast utility of data analysis in team meetings and sat in the dressing rooms with one hand on their laptops. The importance of being a qualified coach was rapidly increasing and international cricket experience was becoming a secondary requisition.
With few technically qualified coaches in Pakistan, the PCB had to take its search out of Pakistani borders. English born Richard Pybus was appointed as Pakistan’s first foreign coach in November 1999. He was not an ex-international cricketer but a coach by profession. He was fired within two months after being whitewashed and sun dried in the Australian summer.
Pybus had not produced results but he had introduced a taste of foreign management, something the Pakistani authorities would thereon forever crave. Apart from being competent and a thorough professional, he had no inclination towards team politics. Free from provincial or personal bias, the foreign coach was absolved of the pride and prejudice that had afflicted many of his predecessors. Pybus had three stints with the Pakistani team in the space of four years. The coach’s cap was also passed around Intikhab Alam, Mudassar Nazar and Javed Miandad in the same period.
In 2004, after their first and only series loss to India at home in their 50-year history, Pakistan sought the services of arguably the most respected coach in the world. Bob Woolmer had been instrumental in the modern revolution of coaching methods. He was appointed as the South African coach in 1994 and by 1999 he had made the Proteas into the No.1 ranked Test team in the world.
Pakistan was ranked No.6 in the world when Bob Woolmer was hired. This was the start of ‘relatively’ the most peaceful period in the Pakistani dressing room since Imran Khan had retired in 1992. Inzamam-ul-Haq became captain by default as most senior players were permanently dropped in the post World Cup cleanup operation of 2003; perhaps chief selector Aamir Sohail settled a few old scores as well.
Inzamam was never known as man with a great cricketing brain or someone geared towards captaincy. However, he turned out to be a good leader of men. He led from the front with the bat and there was nobody to challenge his authority or seniority in the team. This gave Woolmer the ideal opportunity to work on optimising the potential in Pakistan’s talent pool. Mohamad Yousuf, Shoaib Akhtar and Younis Khan flourished and largely credited Woolmer for their success while he motivated Afridi to finally become the all-rounder he should have many years ago.
At the time of the tragic and mysterious death of Bob Woolmer in March 2007, Pakistan was ranked No.3 in Test cricket, only behind Australia and England. Woolmer had disproved the theory that a foreign coach cannot be successful in Pakistan.
Not only was Woolmer very successful but also highly loved and respected. Pakistan had lost to Ireland and had crashed out of the World Cup but the likes of Younis Khan deeply mourned Woolmer’s death. He said “I was the closest to him in the team and we discussed everything. He was like a father figure for me.” Two years later, Younis won the ICC World T20 Champions as captain and dedicated the win to Woolmer.
The PCB had been content with a foreign coach and appointed Jeoff Lawson as Woolmer’s replacement. Lawson was also a thorough professional but had little appetite for nonsense. With a change in government in 2008, Ijaz Butt took charge as PCB chairman in what would arguably become the darkest period in Pakistan’s cricket history. Lawson was not able to adjust to the demands of being Pakistan’s national coach and his regular squabbles with the board and press saw his term come to a premature end in October 2008.
Many ex-cricketers believed that a foreign coach was not the answer, Javed Miandad stated,
On one hand we talk of patriotism while on the other we prefer foreigners of lesser merit over our own experts. Our coming generations will know only Lawsons and Woolmers and not our own great players.
Present dynamics of sports requires qualified coaches who can fulfill the technical, physical and psychological demands of the modern age. Not just national teams around the world but also academies and regional teams opt for coaches who have educated themselves in their field and sport of employment. Pakistan has been trying hard to stay up to speed with this global trend which is fast becoming a necessity.
If Gary Kirsten and Andy Flower can accredit themselves as professional coaches and contribute as instructors for the development of aspiring professional coaches, there is no reason why ex-Pakistani cricketers cannot do the same. Aaqib Javed and Jalal-ud-Din are trained coaches and have done wonderfully well at different levels of the game in Pakistan.
Ijaz Ahmed had previously worked with the team as fielding coach but Julien Fountain is now doing a great job. Mohammad Akram was also chosen over Shoaib Akhar as Pakistan’s bowling coach, primarily due to his coaching certification from England.
After Lawson’s exit the PCB experimented with a string of ex-cricketers serving the national team in different coaching capacities. The likes of Ijaz Ahmed, Intikhab Alam, Aaqib Javed and Waqar Younis toured with the team with little on field success but a whole lot of dressing and boardroom drama. Finally, it came to a point where it was either coach Waqar or captain Afridi could in the team; Waqar eventually resigned for ‘personal’ reasons only to find solace back in the commentary box.
This time the PCB was determined to get back a foreign coach. Due to its lengthy process, Mohsin Khan who had served as chief selector was made interim coach. For that brief period Pakistan performed surprisingly well, including the February 2012 shock whitewash handed out to the then number one ranked England in UAE.
However, PCB’s undeterred pursuit of a foreign coach had brought forward three front runners; Dean Jones, Dav Whatmore and Dermot Reeve. Whatmore was hired in March 2012.
Before the official commencement of his job, Whatmore received a letter of advice from his old Aussie teammate and ex-coach of Pakistan. Lawson was witty, honest and remained a well wisher of Pakistan cricket even after his unceremonious exit a few years earlier.
In October 2012, the PCB advertised for the position of batting coach with at least a Level 3 coaching accreditation as a requirement; several former Pakistani batsmen applied for the job including Zaheer Abbas and Saleem Malik, but Inzamam-ul-Haq was hired as a batting consultant in a stopgap solution. PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf confirmed, "He (Inzamam) won't travel to India with the team but will help the batsmen in the camp as batting consultant. He will be part of the touring unit that goes next year to South Africa.” When Misbah-ul-Haq’s team took the flight across the equator, Inzamam was not on it; rumours of rifts between Inzamam and Misbah also stretch back over a decade.
After Pakistan was whitewashed in South Africa in February 2013, PCB got Trent Woodhill to work with the national team as their batting coach. According to PCB Director Intikhab Alam “He (Woodhill) was preferred over the former players in our country only because of his qualification.”
Many ex cricketers criticised the coach for the loss against the Proteas. Moin Khan said,
Whatmore is an overrated coach. There is a concept in Pakistan that a foreigner will not get involved in player politics but Whatmore is now fighting for survival. If Whatmore doesn’t resign himself, then the PCB should sack (him).
On the following tour to Zimbabwe, Moin was made the manager of the national team. Moin explained “Now that I am the manager and head of the selection committee on tour, I will interfere in every aspect, but only when things are not going according to the plan.” Moin and Whatmore were expected to share a close relationship as manager and coach and mastermind team strategy in Zimbabwe, at least in theory. They failed.
September 12th, 2013, Captain Misbah-ul -Haq and experienced Younis Khan walked out to the crease to start the proceedings of day three of the second Test match in Harare. They were one up in the series and comfortably placed at 163 for 3 in reply to Zimbabwe’s first innings score of 294. The two stalwarts were resuming a 67-run stand and were expected to dominate in favourable conditions and take the game away from the opposition’s reach.
In the first 20 overs of the day, they scored 26 runs while losing their captain through a half hearted cover drive which was pocketed at slip. They seemed to have come out with the wrong game plan or maybe without one at all. Tinashe Panyangara, Tendai Chatara and Brian Vetori appeared to have been mistaken for Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and Colin Croft and the Pakistani batsmen gave the pace trio more respect than they did in the Caribbean tour of 1977.
Two days later Misbah-ul-Haq found himself stranded at 79*, he ran out of partners still 24 runs adrift of the target, his valiant knock came 48 hours too late in an improbable fourth innings chase. Zimbabwe had won a Test against a team other than Bangladesh after 12 years and got into the rankings after six.
Their win against Pakistan came in the backdrop of dramatic settings; a country in economic and political turmoil, with shortage of electricity and lack of running water had brought forward a team playing without a paycheck. However, not just the team that played better cricket won the Test match but the team with more intent and a better back office plan had succeeded against all odds.
What remains consistent in sub-continental cricket boards and fans is their lack of patience and uncompromising stance on their team’s result. Pakistan has dropped to No.6 in rankings and further failure in UAE against the South African’s could be the last straw in Whatmore’s extended period of poor results. The otherwise uncontroversial Saeed Ajmal has already had his feeling known about the coach, that too public ally.
There are social, cultural and communication barriers which make it difficult for foreign coaches to acclimatise and flourish in an alien environment. However, given their professionalism and non-political approach, there appears to be a case to persist with one. Most importantly, though, the PCB needs to get more local coaches accredited from reputable academies and keep pace with fast changing global dynamics of cricket.
