THROUGH THE COVERS: Everyone against everyone else
By Zaheer Abbas
WITH two back to back series under the belt, I was hoping that the PCB and its officials would feel more confident than before, and that this confidence will trickle down to the team management and the boys as well. In short, I hoped that the days of confusion will be finally over — at least till the national team undertakes a foreign tour — and the Board will continue to back players it has itself promoted. I could not have been more wrong.
Instead of behaving like a winning combination, Pakistan cricket, unfortunately, is giving out strange signals. Teams having lost two back to back series generally suffer much less confusion than is the case with the national camp that has won, not lost, two consecutive assignments. If this is not bad management, nothing is.
The ongoing controversy within the PCB hierarchy that revolves around the person of the chief selector is bound to do serious harm to whatever shreds of sincerity that are left in the PCB, if at all. The coach, the captain, fellow selectors on the panel, the chief executive of the PCB — and may I say, the entire nation — has serious problems with the man, but he has apparently been given a free hand to single-handedly destroy the fabric of Pakistan cricket. Obviously, such a blank cheque could only carry the signature of the Board Chairman Tauqir Zia, which, again, is kind of strange and, of course, highly regrettable.
What might be the reason behind such a blind faith on the part of the chairman? Frankly, I have no idea. My guess is that the chairman is suffering from the malaise that affects almost every other Pakistani who happens to be at the helm of some public-sector enterprize; they go whimsical.
They become the kings and emperors of whatever little domain they have, their word — every word — becomes final and remains unchallenged. Those who dare raise a voice of dissent have to pay the cost, often with their head. Likewise, those who adopt a servile and obsequious attitude in the court get rewarded, sometime beyond their own wildest imaginations. To me, this, and this alone, explains the equation between the two.
Had there been even a remote level of accountability exercised by the Board, thing should have been different. The probables announced for the forthcoming One Day series against New Zealand carry as many shocks as had been the case prior to the season, which basically means that Pakistan was able to gain nothing out of the two series, and if it did, it is bent upon experimenting just for the sake of it. Forget the other acts of commission and omission, how do you explain the fact that Moin Khan, in the absence of Rashid Latif, was called in for the Test series against South Africa, and for the forthcoming series against the Kiwis, both of them have been dumped in favour of Kamran Akmal.
I met Moin recently in Hong Kong where he was leading the Pakistan side in the Cathay Pacific Super Sixes tournament, and found him to be enjoying his return to the national fold after a long absence. I am glad that, though belated, he has been named among the probables. But what the future holds for him, or for anybody else, no one has a clue. The kind of management the PCB is practising, where everyone appears to be against everyone else and together they are all conducting affairs in full public view instead of settling their differences behind closed doors, the future of Pakistan cricket itself is not clear, what to talk of an individual’s future.
WITH two back to back series under the belt, I was hoping that the PCB and its officials would feel more confident than before, and that this confidence will trickle down to the team management and the boys as well. In short, I hoped that the days of confusion will be finally over — at least till the national team undertakes a foreign tour — and the Board will continue to back players it has itself promoted. I could not have been more wrong.
