The victory in the last outing on the tour was thumping and thrilling … almost titillating if you allow modern jargon to creep into the text. It was a pity that there was only one T20 International on the cards, which makes it impossible to see if Team Pakistan could take the momentum forward and sustain it. For that to happen, we will have to wait for a while.
The five-match series of One Day Internationals (ODIs) provided more relevant ground to assess Pakistan’s performance in the shorter versions of the game. It may sound weird, but the 1-4 thrashing came at just the right time.
Just this much might be enough for many to stop going any further and call the scribe some anti-Pakistan lunatic, but stay a while, if you could, and you might see there is an argument in the equation. Had it been 0-5 instead of 1-4 at the end, it would have been even better … may be not for the pompous officialdom stomping the corridors of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), but definitely for Pakistan cricket per se.
The margin and manner of the ODI thrashing in England is a timely reminder of everything that is wrong with Pakistan cricket. It’s time probably for another clichéd fresh beginning
Coming hot on the heels of Pakistan’s top positioning as a Test side, even a 2-3 margin would have been bandied around as a victory of sorts (the T20 victory would now serve that nefarious purpose!). But the significant absence of fight and verve in the ODI unit, and the gulf of capability that separated the two sides surely poured cold water on such plans. Pakistan played to its full potential and lost miserably. There were no push-up moments, so to say. The boot camp was a distant memory. And the drooping shoulders would have put to shame the poor military trainers who had got rather accustomed to receiving salutes of honour — deservingly or undeservingly — earlier during the tour.
The one-way nature in which the ODI series was played out brought to the surface everything that is wrong with Pakistan cricket. Everything that got pushed under the rug in the wake of the statistical quirk that Pakistan’s top slot in the Test ranking represented has now clawed its way back in full public view.
Before we go any further, let’s get two things out of the way. One, Pakistan’s better Test ranking owes itself in great part to the fact that, for a couple of years, the team has been playing in the UAE, our cricketing backyard. England was the first tour in a long time and, to the team’s credit, it played a good enough game to draw the series 2-2. Other than the UAE factor, Misbahul Haq and Younis Khan represent the difference between the Test side and the outfits taking the field in ODIs and T20s. Two, while embarking on the tour, there was no confusion that the worth of the cosmetic changes that had been brought about by PCB would be — should be — judged in the shorter formats of the game as the chop-and-change strategy was applied after two consecutive miseries in the shorter versions.
Seen against that backdrop, the strategy did not work. There is much talk in the air as these lines are being written that Azhar Ali, the ODI captain, has his neck on the line. Far from being the captain, his place in the side is being questioned. There is also talk of a keep-the-place-quit-the-captaincy compromise. By the looks of it, he would be the scapegoat PCB would be using in its ritualistic purification of its soul. A soulless soul is an oxymoron, but that is what applies perfectly to the PCB.
Without any confession of sins, Azhar may face the elimination rites, but can he really be faulted? He was not even a part of the ODI team when he was put in charge of it. Whose fault was it? Not Azhar’s, one would guess. The move, as always, was touted as a ‘fresh beginning’ at the time, but we are now again on the path of yet another and totally clichéd fresh beginning. Heads will roll, as they always do in the event of such a thrashing, but they will be the heads of those who don’t matter. Heads will not roll, of the people who are actually behind this massacre, as they never do.
But the 1-4 scoreline and the manner and margin of defeat is good for Pakistan cricket because it has pre-empted the self-righteous chest-thumping that the cricketing gods in Lahore were getting ready for after finding the Test team hit the top of the chart.
As things stood at the end of the series, Pakistan finds itself perched rather precariously at 9th with only Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and Ireland behind it in the international team rankings. One would like to believe that there is still room left for Pakistan to manoeuvre its way through to the World Cup instead of taking the roundabout — and rather embarrassing — route through the qualifying rounds. But being in such a tight spot in itself is embarrassing enough for someone somewhere to wake up and do something about it. And, lest it be mistaken, ‘someone somewhere’ does not refer even remotely to some military boot camp. What we need are pure and simple cricketing decisions. Boots and boot camps can’t do that.
When last reports came in, the PCB boss said his own life within the setup was dependent on the advice of his cardiologist. He, however, made it plain that he was quite keen to continue in office. Seen either way, it’s a matter of heart as far as he is concerned. What we need is someone for whom being in office would be a matter of mind, not the heart. Unless that happens, the nation will have to make do with a staple diet of fresh beginnings.
The 1-4 thrashing, as such, was good for it has underlined the need to do something for a nation which is on top in the Test arena and 9th in the ODIs. As for the T20 victory, refreshing though it was, in the context of the tour it was a single match, which, metaphorically speaking, was a one-nighter. And one-night affairs are often more interesting than meaningful.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 18th, 2016
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