LAHORE: Pakistan cricket team’s head coach Waqar Younis and captain Misbah-ul-Haq on Tuesday met Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Shaharyar M. Khan and briefed him about the team’s performance on the recent tour of Sri Lanka where visitors were comprehensively beaten in the Tests as well in the ODI series.
Shaharyar will also be meeting chief selector and manager of the team Moin Khan in Karachi during his three-day visit there starting from Wednesday to know his views about the dismal tour.
It was learnt that in Tuesday’s meeting Misbah expressed regret and disappointment over the poor performance of the team, especially his own as he completely failed with the bat. Since his comeback into the national team in 2008, Misbah has been prolific with the bat in the middle-order and has been the mainstay for the team. As captain too, although he has won quite a few matches for Pakistan, critics have often labelled his style of leadership as defensive and unimaginative. For the record, Misbah has captained Pakistan in 29 Tests, winning 12 and losing nine while eight have ended in draw.
In the ODI format, Misbah has enjoyed a fair amount of success by leading the team in 73 ODIs, winning 40 of them.
However, his rare failure in the last series against Sri Lanka clearly affected the team’s performance. In a candid discussion on Tuesday, he told the chairman that he is fully aware of his shortcomings and will do his best to overcome them in the coming months.
The chairman, giving the skipper a patient hearing, backed Misbah as captain and assured him of full support for the future.
Later, talking to reporters Misbah said his own performance was the result of extra pressure on him in Sri Lanka. “Though there has always been pressure on me in the past, this time it was even more,” he said. “However, our main target is the World Cup 2015 and we will move forward in a positive manner to achieve good results in the mega event,” Misbah said.
The captain said since Pakistan was playing Test and ODI cricket after a long lay-off, that was also one of the reasons behind team’s failure. “We last played ODI cricket in Asia Cup and Test cricket in January and February,” he said. “In coming series the players, especially the batsmen, will come out with renewed confidence and rhythm,” he said.
To a question regarding selection of players, Misbah said, “It is better to ask this question to the person who selected the team. I had to give my opinion as the captain throughout but at the end a couple of changes in the team was a routine matter,” he said. “In Australia and India, captains have a major role in selecting the team which is ideal setting,” he added. However, as an after thought Misbah defended his players: “They all tried their best but they could not get the best result.”
Meanwhile, sources close to the board told Dawn that many officials in the PCB believed that the sudden decline in Misbah’s performance was due to his recent loss of weight as he reportedly lost more than 10kg before departing for Sri Lanka.
The sources said the PCB chairman basically disapproves of any official holding more than one office and feels that such arrangement does not work too well for the team. On the other hand, previous chairman Sethi was quite inclined on handing dual duties to officials and made a number of decisions in this regard. Sources said a decision in this regard will be taken soon after Shaharyar completes his review of team’s performance against Sri Lanka this month.
It may be mentioned here that an unprecedented 10-member team management accompanied the 15-member squad in Sri Lanka, a decision which was widely criticised by the former cricketers and experts. Sources said too many heads in the team management might have failed to create consensus in planning the team strategies and that resulted in defeats during the recent series.
Meanwhile, the sources said Waqar had no words to defend his performance as head coach on his first assignment but he ensured the chairman that the performance of the team would be better in the next series against Australia and New Zealand.
Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2014