Pakistan cricket, a long-playing circus with clowns as heroes!

Raju Korti
The Pakistan Cricket Board and its players have fine-tuned the art of being in a state of permanent ferment. After their dismal performance in the World Cup, the Board was revamped only to consolidate the view that it is also a theater of the absurd. A clueless and lost 29-year-old Babar Azam who averages 47 Tests was replaced by 34-year-old Shan Masood who averages 28 in Tests. If you thought this was just keep-the-change, the real magic was performed by the new administration overhauled after the World Cup debacle.

The Board brought in Salman Butt who served a five-year ban and some time in jail after being proved guilty in a spot-fixing scandal during England's tour in 2016. However, this was so shameless even by Pakistan's standards that the Prime Minister's Office had to quickly cancel this decision. It also inducted former pacer Wahab Riaz as the Chief Selector along with Kamran Akmal and Rao Inftikhar Anjum on the panel. Perhaps the only intelligent piece of work here was Riaz had retired in August and the running joke was he would have selected himself in the national side. While Butt became a butt of public scorn, his partner-in-crime Muhammed Amir was fast-tracked into the side around the same time.

Butt, Kamran, Riaz and Anjum have all played together between 2004 and 2010 and with the exception of Riaz, all were found guilty of spot-fixing by the National Crime Agency in London and the International Cricket Council imposing bans on them. I have repeatedly reiterated in my blogs that while its Board works in a whimsical manner, its players act as parallel constitutional authorities. Between the players, there are cross-currents and animosities that surface every now and then,

To be fair to Salman Butt, he was a fairly good batsman and regretted his actions but the fixing taint put paid to his career. Waqar Younis recommended his return to the national team but Shahid Afridi, a confirmed braggart, thwarted his attempts. The same Shahid Afridi who conceitedly promoted his son-in-law 23-year-old Shaheen Shah Afridi as Pakistan's skipper for the T-20 format. The senior Afridi claimed that he had no role to play in his son-in-law's selection but in Pakistan, things are so blatant, you don't need to put two and two together. The deluge of public reaction in the midst of these developments, the cross-currents between the dramatis personae was sheer entertainment.

The PMO, run by a caretaker himself, had to admit in other words that Butt's appointment was an outrage. Neither PCB's (then) Chairman Zaka Ashraf nor Riaz had credentials to be in the Board. For the record, unlike Riaz, Ashraf has not played any first-class or List A cricket and was on the Board merely on his corporate experience. 

Instead of the much trumpeted overhaul, the Pakistan Board got more and more embroiled in machinations and insinuations. In my blog on December 31, 2022, I had written how the then Chairman Ramiz Raja, normally a subdued man, got into intemperate outbursts and in the bad books of the Board's new management committee which was headed by journalist Najam Sethi. One wondered whether Sethi, who had three brief stints in the past as president/chairman knew what he had walked into given the mercurial tempers that obtain Pakistan cricket.

I had also stated: "If as an avid cricket administration follower you tend to believe that governing boards across cricket playing nations, including our own BCCI back home, are self-styled and are run by whimsical people, look at what is happening in Pakistan Cricket Board. The PCB leaves no stone unturned to jealously guard its reputation as a long-standing joke, its chairmen replaced with every change of government. The unceremonious chucking out of former player and commentator Ramiz Raja is a case in point."

Now link this with the militant stand Ramiz has taken with the new dispensation and you will understand the point I am trying to labour over. The selection of Pakistan team for the gruelling Australian tour is going to be baptism by fire and it wouldn't be surprising that more heads may roll and/or become scapegoats. Their shattering 360-run battering in the first Test at Perth with captain Masood himself faring poorly and Azam continuing his mediocre run, has provided fodder to lose canons like Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Akhtar and mushrooming "experts" on the social media who are smarting like only they do.

Incidentally. nobody knows what exactly is the brief given to Mohammad Hafeez who took over from the disgraced Mickey Arthur as the Director of Pakistan men's cricket team. Since his appointment, he has been giving long interviews right, left and centre, justifying the team selection and believing that it can turn Pakistan's cricketing fortunes downside up. He has of course made some right noises but in Pakistan, right noises are smothered by those who want to muddy waters with their personal agenda and getting even with whom they nurse personal rivalry.

A couple of days before the Perth Test, he said he was thrilled to know that the Pakistan team is intent on defeating Australia on its own soil which is a pipedream in its present tattered condition. But trust Pakistan to put on not only a brave front but also go overboard. Before the World Cup, the Pakistan team kept parroting that it was in India to win the World Cup. Nothing wrong with that, of course, that it was unable to walk that talk. Hafeez's, as also some other player's conviction is mind boggling. They still boast that Pakistan can beat Australia in Australia (or for that matter anywhere!).

The run up to the selection itself was a towering absurdity. It is no secret there were dissensions within the team during the World Cup. Babar Azam chose to step down than being thrown out and the people brought in as part of this "overhaul" showed who is calling the shots and who is the director behind the scenes. The entire team has floundered badly and given the morass it finds itself in, the talk that it can still thrash Australia is a bravado only Pakistanis are capable of. Even the team's die-hard supporters are now finding it difficult to see Pakistan's resurgence.

Going back to my old blog: In Pakistan, nothing can ever go right in any sphere of life as murky politics creeps in at all junctures. It is a virtual free-for-all with players, organisers, governing bodies and self-proclaimed experts constantly engaged in leg pull and rabid criticism of each other. It is as confusing and amusing to know who is with who and who opposes who. 

Random and irrational changes often made at the instances of vested interests in the powers that be have had debilitating consequences on the players at all levels of the game. The structure of domestic cricket in Pakistan has been a non-stop roller coaster. School and club cricket at the top tiers have bled with inadequacies. Games have hardly got the marketing boost unlike in India (the other extreme end) and matches are rarely televised because of which, the players are compelled to pat their own backs. 

With such an abysmal state of affairs, little wonder the "best Babar Azam becomes Gobar Azam" in no time.