Pakistan cricket team’s affair with foreign coaches goes back to 1999. It was a time when team politics and player power had become rather rampant in the camp.

Captains were being changed at the drop of the hat when just about every senior player in the side would get to be captain.

Although the national team had all the ingredients to dominate the world of cricket there was obviously a lack of direction.

In Wasim and Waqar we were blessed with the most potent new ball pair in the history of the game and their backup came in the form of Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Zahid alongside a very skilled medium pacer, Aqib Javed. Our spin attack comprised Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed. In an age when wicketkeepers were known for just keeping wickets and not make much of a contribution with the bat, in Rashid Latif and Moin Khan Pakistan was blessed with two wicketkeeper batsmen. Our batting resources were not as rich as our bowling attack, but, nonetheless, it still had talent. Amir Sohail and Saeed Anwer made a great opening pair. Inzamam ul Haq, Saleem Malik, Ijaz Ahmed and Basit Ali formed a formidable middle order with another genius, Mohammad Yousuf, joined them later. But as is often the case, natural ability is not enough to produce results.

It was around the World Cup when the players had a falling out with the team coach, Javed Miandad. Miandad was then removed from the position. Mushtaq Mohammad was asked to join the team then. But defeat in the final and the chaos of match fixing allegations led to his departure. This was when the idea of the first foreign coach was hatched and English coach Richard Pybus got the job right ahead of Pakistan’s tour of Australia.

But the tour was more of a nightmare. Pakistan got whitewashed resulting in Pybus’s sacking.

Still he made a return to the team after one-and-a-half year ahead of Pakistan’s tour of England. This time around he had something to smile about. Pakistan drew the Test series and the triangular series produced some mixed results when we continuously defeated England but lost the final against Australia.

After 9/11, world dynamics changed rather dramatically and Pybus, taking note of the political situation, refused to come to Pakistan thus his stint was prematurely cut short once more. But that did not end his association with Pakistan cricket.

Mudassar Nazar, who had taken up the role of team coach after Pybus left, had things moving quite smoothly. Pakistan enjoyed some exciting triumphs under him of which the ODI series win in Australia was the highlight. But as the 2003 World Cup drew closer, the aging Pakistan side started losing its sheen. Pakistan failed to get to the final of the tri-nation in Morocco, another tri-nation in Kenya produced indifferent results, too, but the first round exit in the Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka in 2002 proved to be Nazar’s downfall.

Once again Pybus was given the responsibility of coaching the national team and once again he saw Pakistan being crushed by the mighty Aussies in Sri Lanka and UAE.

The shabby shows continued in the 2003 World Cup with Pakistan getting knocked out in the first round, our worst performance since the inaugural World Cup in 1975.

Richard Pybus resigned after the World Cup but once again his stint with the side was too short to make any judgments about his influence over the team. Still it was safe to say that the idea of having a foreign coach fell on its face for sometime after that.

In 2004, after the hammering in the home series against India, team coach Javed Miandad bore the brunt once again. That was when another English coach Robert Andrew Woolmer, better known as Bob Woolmer, was appointed the coach of the Pakistan cricket team after Greg Chappell refused to take the job.

Woolmer was Pakistan’s second foreign coach. Both team captain Inzamam ul Haq and coach Woolmer developed a great working relationship, with Inzamam taking the lead role.

With his innovative methods and use of technology to get the maximum out of his players the late Bob Woolmer had absolutely revolutionised coaching as South Africa’s head coach in the mid 1990s.

The use of video analysis, biomechanics and innovative fielding drills helped him take the game to the next level. Like he did for the players in South Africa, some Pakistani players, too, shone under his guidance.

Like he had done for Jacques Kallis, Woolmer also pushed Shoaib Malik at the top of the batting order. Malik enjoyed a very successful run in limited overs but lack of technical strength to cope up with the bouncing ball saw him fail in Tests.

Kamran Akmal also enjoyed a resounding backing from Woolmer and Inzamam, which he translated into some scintillating performances, the centuries in Mohali (2005) and Karachi (2006) are testimony of that.

Younis Khan developed into a great cricketer from a good one, Woolmer was an absolute godfather to him. Kaneria became Inzamam’s trump card and like Malik and Kamran, his career, too, was hurt after Woolmer.

Mohammad Yousuf also flourished under Woolmer and piled on runs to break all sort of records.

Wins over England and India are some other successes attributed to the coach. Pakistan showed tremendous character on the tour of India and Sri Lanka, getting a draw and a victory respectively. Inzamam and Woolmer took Pakistan to the takeoff position but the side never took off. The injuries to key bowlers on crucial tours proved to hold us back. On tours of England in 2006 and South Africa in 2007, the side fought valiantly but lack of depth in bowling got the better of the team.

Inzamam’s conservative captaincy was another factor in the team’s slowing down. At key moments, Inzamam sat back for things to happen rather making them happen. During the 2007 World Cup, Pakistan cricket witnessed another sinking reality when the team was kicked out the tournament in the first round, and then came the shock of Woolmer's sudden and tragic death.

After Woolmer’s passing, Dav Whatmore and Geoff Lawson were the top contenders for coaching the Pakistan side. Eventually Lawson got the nod. Under Lawson, Pakistan was on the verge of becoming the inaugural World T20 champions but the title narrowly slipped from our grasp.

Following that Pakistan lost the series at home against South Africa and the tour of India became another bitter pill to swallow for Lawson. The following year Pakistan hardly played any Test matches and another early exit in the 2008 Asia Cup was suffered at home. The change in government in the country brought an end to the era of the Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Nasim Ashraf and the next man in the seat, Ijaz Butt, made his intentions clear about foreign coaches when he sent Lawson packing well before his contract expired. His exit brought a pause in Pakistan cricket’s flirtation with foreign coaches.

Sri Lanka-born Australian Dav Whatmore turned out to be the fourth foreign coach employed by the PCB in March 2012. Mohsin Khan, who took over after Waqar’s resignation due to health reasons, was the unlucky one making the way for Whatmore. The board justified Whatmore’s appointment by pointing out that Mohsin was not a qualified coach. In this day and age, it is very hard to imagine a side playing at the international level without a qualified coach.

Like in the past, this foreign coach, too, brought with him a mixed bag of results for the team. Pakistan lost both the Test series and the ODI series in Sri Lanka but went on to win the Asia Cup after 12 long years. Australia inflicted another ODI series defeat but Pakistan returned the compliment by triumph in the subsequent T20 series. The World T20 campaign seemed promising before another semi-final exit in Colombo. But beating India in the ODI series after that was certainly the high point in India.

After Pakistan’s recent disappointing tour of South Africa where we lost the three-match Test series by 3-0, the five-match ODI series by 3-2 and won only one T20 after the other was washed out it is being said that the coach could have played a pivotal role in changing things around. From the looks of it Dav Whatmore’s stint with the Pakistan cricket team is fast turning into a flop.

The writer is a club cricketer.