Cricket In Blood!
If we say that Cricket doesn't run in our veins like blood we would be lying to ourselves. Cricket has been the first love of the majority of the Pakistani Nation since the game came here. I am among that lucky generation of kids who exposed to this Sports game back in the famous early 90's era when there were two great emerging fast bowlers Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis attempting to reach their peaks, A classic middle order batsman what we call the backbone of the batsmen The Great Javed and the of the most renowned charismatic captains ever Imran Khan was around the twilight of his career. To my experience as an extensive viewer of Pakistan Cricket for the past 30 to 32 years, we came to a conclusion Pakistan is probably a land where you find amazing born cricketers in every other street of different cities of the country. Cricket has been in the blood of this nation for many years and 1992 famous World Cup win was a trigger to instill energy to the powerhouse talent that country was holding within itself.
If you look at the World Cricket closely, On one hand, you would see the superpowers of Cricket, The top teams like Australia and England having their first-rate first-class cricket systems which produce top quality players and on the other hand, Here in the other side of the World, you will witness a huge amount of raw talent coming up from quite a weaker first-class system with all the burden of economic problems on their shoulders and those players become World class heroes in no time. The credit goes to the naturally gifted talent of Cricket here.
This talent is the specialty and contribution of Pakistan towards World Cricket that it gave the world incredible matches. Be it the Two W's, who mastered the reverse swing like no other, The Great captain Imran Khan, The destructive opening pair Saeed Anwar & Aamir Sohail. You got the big man Inzamam who used to bulldozed every fast bowler or spinner once one a charge, You got the fastest bowler Sohaib Akhtar and the fastest century maker Afridi, You name it and you will find an extraordinary talent here which the World Cricket recognized over the years. These were the cricketing heroes who shone the World Cricket sports not only with their skills and powerful performances but also with their passion and charisma.
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| One of the most destructive Opening Pairs of Mid 90's |
Some years ago, I remember on an occassion, The great Steve Waugh said that the surprising element with Pakistan Cricket is that they throw such good cricketers out of nowhere to the World. I believe that every word of him was true, this is because of the love for the game and immense natural talent nation possess.
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| The Sultan Of Swing Used To Fire In Crunch Situations Like No One! |
There have been no questions on the high-quality diverse talent Pakistan cricket has produced over the years, however, there are questions on how the nation and the authorities managed that very talent. This has been one of the dilemmas of Pakistan Cricket, i.e. The management of players into the domestic and international cricket system. The inconsistent chances to players, instability with the team and a sudden disappearance of cricketers from the selection became the trend. This has been an unfortunate thing started to happen more after the 1992 World Cup. Many young players debuted with a bang and suddenly went off like a flash boom and goes off from the scene all over. In early 92/93 I can recall we got a very good opener/1 down batsman Shahid Saeed who didn't get the chances he deserved. He toured England and performed well there, Later in the tour to Australia, He had some failed innings on the tough tour where even the Great Javed, Inzy, Aamir and others were struggling to perform. After that tour, He was then disappeared from the cricket scene.
There used to be only one channel in those days. The fans remain unaware of many talent disappearances from cricket. People didn't have the 100 news channels luxury those days. We really couldn't get to know the inside stories of what really happened with some of the great looking players.
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| Basit Ali played like young Javed but the heroics went short-lived |
Who is not aware of an emerging classy middle-order batsman Basit Ali a.k.a replica of Great Javed Miandad who got over with Cricket very early in his career. I don't think so any old school Pakistan cricket fan has forgotten the sixes hit by him to Ambrose and Walsh in Sharjah. The windies two lethal fast bowlers who were at their peaks looked helpless before Basit's hard-hitting sixes. Shahid Nazir, Muhammad Zahid, Taufeeq Umar, Asim Kamal, Ali Naqvi, Salim Elahi and Yasir Hameed are some of the other known talents who got wasted by the mismanagement either from board or tour selection committees. Who was more responsible? At the end of the day, the onus lies with the cricket board. The board has the responsibility to channelize the players according to their capabilities.
The unpredictable tag is famous for Pakistan Cricket team. To this date, Every top team is on its toes when playing with Pakistan because they know that on their day Pakistan is unstoppable and that day can come to any time and place during a tournament so never take them easily. While the unpredictable nature produced some great and some very bad results for Pakistan, The lineup and squads had also been quite unpredictable often times. With the exceptions of some cornerstones to the game, Pakistan mostly ended up experimenting with the lineups and combinations resulting in an unstable pool of players for the tournaments and series. Some great captains came in, they settled the team but their own reign was short-lived and this was one of the most obvious reasons that we couldn't get a stable lineup for a longer period of time. There was a time in mid 90 to late 90's that we had 8 or 9 captains used to play in the Final XI, You have a captain in one tour and on the next tour we used to see a new captain. Then we used to see a captain's announcement of a player who was never in the team and now he is your captain. It felt like a musical chair of who will be the next captain in those days.
Unfortunate at its Best
The Powerhouse of talent and skills which Pakistan Cricket had gotten, Had the channelizing and captaincy musical chair been improved, I don't think so that Pakistan won't be winning World Cups regularly and could have been the No.1 ranking ODI team for some good period of time. In an ideal situation, I dream of Javed Miandad as Captain from 92 to 96, Wasim Akram from 96 to 2000, Waqar from 2000 to 2003 then and Inzy from 2003 to 2007 and the list goes on but its irony that it couldn't happen. It's surprising that this only happens with Pakistan Cricket, The rest of the world cricket team got it right and had captains with longer runs. Unfortunately, The eras of some greats got plagued with internal rifts, high time politics between board and players and some match fixing stuff. One can feel so deeply about the fans emotions and feelings especially for the kids of that golden era... How much they got hurt when they come to know that their superheroes were fighting with each other rather than playing as a unit for the competitive matches. However, when you work together, differences do come and on grounds, Pakistan did perform to their best of capabilities.
Despite all the unfortunate problems, Pakistan didn't stop to surprise the world with some power-packed performances. The era from 1999 to 2009 went well overall where we saw the brilliance of Shoaib Akhtar, Inzamam peak performances as a captain batsman, Asif and Aamir bowling brilliance and winning of the World T20 under Younis Khan captaincy and some of Afridi's heroics in India and other parts of the World.
In 2009, It seemed that problems were not going to get over from Pakistan Cricket as Srilanka was on home tour when One fine morning of a brilliant test match at Lahore Qaddafi Stadium, Pakistan Cricket got a worse hit of its lifetime when Srilankan cricket team caught an attack on their bus while coming to the stadium. The players saved but home cricket didn't.
In the same year, Pakistan surprizes the world again by becoming World T20 champion under Younis Khan leadership. It looked like a new captain was born. But later, An unlucky Younis Khan dropped a crucial catch of Grant Elliot in Champions Trophy 2009 Semi-Final at a crucial stage, as a result, Pakistan lost an opportunity and lost the match eventually. People forgot Newzeland great performance in that match what they only remember was the dropped catch. When the teams came back home despite getting a warm welcome to reach to semi-finals, The players were accused of match-fixing particularly Younis Khan. An honest yet disappointed Younis resigned from Captaincy eventually. The internal rift between players again reached its peak. Younis era as captain was ended before it was ready to take a flight. On an important Australia tour, Pakistan was under a new captain Muhammad Yousuf. The team got thrashed badly by Aussies in all thee formats. Fans kept hearing internal rift news. The captaincy musical chair seemed to start all over again but PCB made an important decision of making a popular choice by appointing Shahid Afridi as captain for all three formats.
A nightmare was awaiting Pakistan yet again in the test series against Australia, Afridi made a hasty decision of taking retirement from Test Cricket after losing the first test from Australia. Salman Butt then appointed as brand new test captain. Three top Pakistani players Aamir, Asif and Salman Butt got involved in match-fixing. The fans were disappointed, Cricket already went away from home... The sadness prevailed everywhere...... But it is as they say, "Every darkness ends up with light one day.....
The 2nd Survival
In 2010, Misbah-ul-Haq came as a savior to bring stability to Pakistan test cricket. He got the great role from PCB, selected a pool of test players, gave them enough confidence and fans were started to seeing some stability in the test cricket. Under his run, We witnessed the most consistent pool of test players in the history of Pakistan Test Cricket. Misbah's run as test captain strengthen the popular view that stability of captaincy and lineup can make you World No.1 Rank Team despite you are playing away from home and you have got all the other problems too.
Pakistan was forced to play at a neutral venue and UAE proved as heaven for Pakistan Cricket for those times. The wickets suited Pakistani batsmen and bowlers, Younis Khan shone like no other, Misbah produced some match-winning innings, Azhar Ali developed to an established batsman, Ahmed Shahzad got developed as a very fine opener, we saw heroics from Saeed Ajmal, Abdur Rehman, Umar Gul and Hafeez to name a few. Pakistan managed to beat some top teams like England and Australia with big margins powered by some fantastic performances on their new home cricket soil UAE.
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| No Tuk Tuk, He's the Most Successful Test Captain fo Pakistan |
On the other side, Afridi took command for the One Day Team, He took care of his army really well till 2011 World Cup. The team got gelled as a unit after a long time, Afridi's role to instill energy and passion into the team was remarkable at that period of time. The aggression was back which was very much needed. The era had become literally a second survival for Pakistan Cricket. We can remember the fans were happy and excited like anything when Afridi took the team to Semi-Final in 2011 WC in India. The confidence was coming back and the team was moving in the right direction... Until Pakistan toured Westindies.
Another Debacle
The team got a warm reception on its way back to home after WC 2011. Despite losing semi-finals from the arch-rivals India, The fans were joyous with the hard-fought out matches and they greeted the team at the airport with open arms. It was for the first time that fans gladly accepted defeat in the World Cup and that too against arch-rivals. It was an honorable tournament for them. Pakistan then toured West-Indies, Lost the only T20 but won the 5 ODI match series with 3-2 in the end. The fans heard some news of conflicts between the Captain and the Coach Waqar Younis over team selection.
Just when things were moving great for the game, Suddenly we got the news that rifts have started and this time between Shahid Afridi and Waqar Younis as well as some differences with the chairman of the board Ijaz Butt came back again. People were smelling a dramatic change. Overnight we saw tickers as breaking-news that PCB has replaced Afridi as captain with Misbah-Ul-Haq, The fans were grasping this news when they got hit with another bombshell that as reaction Afridi has announced his immediate retirement from all forms of the game till Ijaz Butt acting as chairman of the board. The team got to break up one more time than another... We saw a new captain and a brand new thought within the team. Misbah proved a strictly okay captain for the One Days relative to Test Matches. The team overall momentum shifted from aggression to defensive approach overtime, Hafeez was appointed as T20 Captain, Afridi eventually took his retirement back and came to action back but his performance started to decline as time passed. Pakistan lost another World T20 semi-final against Sri Lanka.
Afridi then becomes the T20 Captain again but that old aggression and energy which he used to bring to the team as a leader were surprisingly missing. Misbah remained ODI Captain, Eventually, we saw a debacle in 2015 ODI World Cup. Rest of World Cricket adapt to new cricket rules quite quickly, the homegrown leagues like IPL, Big Bash, BPL, and SLPL brought some amazing talent for them and changed the way of how cricket gets play especially in the shorter formats. Pakistan Cricket left far behind than other competitive teams meanwhile. The reasons were obvious. Inconsistency and Unpredictability in cricket operations ultimately brought the same results for the team.
Captaincy Trend Unchanged
After the debacle in 2015 World Cup, Misbah retired with a heavy heart from ODI as well while Shahid Afridi announced that He'd like to remain Captain for 2016 T20 World Cup, probably he wanted to leave the International arena on a high ground for good. The dilemma of ODI captaincy remains there with a monumental blunder of appointing Azhar Ali as a One Day captain out of nowhere. This has not been a new thing with Pakistan Cricket as many times a player who is out of squad suddenly makes a come back after a debacle and marks his come back as captain. There have been plenty of examples of this trend, Azhar Ali's story was the same chapter similarly. As expected, Azhar run was not away from the expectations people have with him. Meanwhile, Pakistan lost World T20 matches quite badly. The ODI team, on the other hand, was going nowhere but downwards... Azhar had to resign to from the captaincy eventually. Afridi then couldn't make a return to the international side as well.
Miraculous Revival
With Sarfraz knocking the captaincy door hard for because of his energy, freshness, some great wins as captain of Quetta Gladiators in PSL and his powerful batting performances with an added factor of having no old baggage and politics in his short career made him the most reasonable choice for captain in shorter formats. Sarfraz appointed as shorter format captain as the most popular choice among cricket circles.
Pakistan with its hard fought efforts managed to qualify for the famous Champions Trophy. At the start of CT, The match was none other than the arch-rivals India, The team got smacked by the arch-rivals in the first game, It was an immensely disappointing performance.
Post that match, every cricketing expert was disappointed with the performance, It looked like an unlimited nightmare for Pakistan ODI Cricket, Ganguly opined that Pakistan's big names like Javed Miandad, Salim Malik etc needs to sit down and construct a strategy to bring back the old magic of Pakistan Cricket which used to be there in the 90's era, Little did Ganguly know that Pakistan is most dangerous when cornered. To no expectations at all, The unpredictability star of the team made a return big time and Pakistan steamrolled all the big teams in the remaining CT matches, Ultimately clinched the championship by beating India in a one-sided affair final.
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| Mandi Bahuddin Express on the run. An emerging Fast Bowler "Hasan Ali" |
The fans rejoiced, the experts were shocked, the entire cricketing World saw a miraculous revival of Pakistan ODI team as the team worn white coats and lifted the champions of the champions trophy Upon coming back home, the entire nation stood behind the champions, People stormed to Sarfraz's house and paid great tribute to team's performance. It indeed looked like a miracle that a team which lost its old magic and was written off by the experts before the tournament eventually delivered a marvelous performance and became the champion.
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| A champion's welcome! Like a 1992 World Cup Revisited |
Cricket Comes Home
Good things have again started to happen Pakistan in quick fashion, First Misbah made it possible to reach top ranks as test team and then Champions Trophy victory under energetic captain Sarfraz played a major role in the revival of Pakistan Cricket that Pakistan is here to stay and a strong Pakistan team is necessary for International Cricket.
ICC felt the right thing at the right time. The great performances, Two successful events of PSL and some strong security measures, all played a huge role in the World to consider touring Pakistan again. Pakistani fans finally saw World XI touring the home soil to play 3 T20 Matches in Lahore. The games went ultra successful and it seems that door for international cricket teams is about to open very soon.
What's Next
The smooth transition of test captaincy from Misbah to Sarfraz is one of its kind and rare in our cricket culture, however, it's a great news for the stability of Pakistan Cricket. With a new captain with champions trophy in the bag carrying some amazing talent. At the moment, Pakistan is pumping hot with some brand new talent both in the bowling and batting department. PSL played a big part in exposing the fresh talent before people, Hasan Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Shadab Khan, and Rumman Raees are among few who are the prime products of PSL in such a short time.
However, PSL shouldn't be the only face of domestic players. Critical steps are required in the domestic structure to generate fans interest in the domestic matches because there are plenty of players who haven't shown up in PSL but carries some fantastic performances to their records but due to lack of fans interest, lack of sponsors in the domestic games, those players are not highlighted before people. Although with strong local sports media, The names are now known relatively but until or unless the domestic games got some better exposure on the television with sponsors and crowds, I am afraid the talent might not get well-deserved chances to the national squad.
We must realize that having a bunch of talent is one part and its a blessing but to manage them well is another part which is none less than an art and it is what we can say valuing your blessing. I am hopeful that the chief selector Inzamam Ul Haq will create a pool of players for all three formats on merit basis and give due chances to players depending upon the requirements in different formats. I am hopeful for an Improved domestic structure. As far as selection is concerned, Inzy has been a World Class batsman and his experience of cricket make us expect good things from him. In my opinion, He has done a good job so far but there is a lot of work to do in managing and channelizing this talent on merit basis. Its a tough ask for sure. Whether the old guns deserve chances more than the fresh talent? This is the question for some other time in future. There is an amazing opportunity lies ahead of PCB and if this PCB team manages to handle this great talent well, improve the domestic structure and pitches and a stable on the merit selection, Boy Pakistan would be unstoppable and rise again than ever in the Golden Era.
About the Writer:
A passionate Cricket lover and likes to opine his views on things related to Cricket from real-time matches to cricket video games
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