The fallout from our cricket team’s disastrous performance in the World T20 Championship began even before we were knocked out of the tournament. The spectacle has been unedifying. PCB Chairman Shaharyar Khan threatened to fire Shahid Afridi as captain and coach Waqar Younis severely criticised the players after our match against India. Since coming home, the war of words has only become worse. Manager Intikhab Alam, like everyone else watching TV, declared Afridi’s captaincy ‘absolutely clueless’ but he also found an unexpected scapegoat in the form of Imran Khan, whom Intikhab criticised for not being up to speed with the modern game. Imran had been invited to give a pep talk to the team before the India match. How one talk can have such a negative effect on the team was left unexplained, although Imran proceeded to then throw away the moral high ground by blaming Nawaz Sharif for our cricketing woes. Political pointscoring of this kind is exactly why our cricket setup has never been reformed. Every actor is self-interested and looking only to save his own skin. We cannot expect our players to perform as a team when no one else does the same.
Waqar, who will probably resign before being pushed overboard, was similarly scathing about Afridi and singled out Umar Akmal and Ahmed Shahzad for a lack of commitment. His other recommendations, calling for greater professionalism, were sound but will likely be drowned out in the controversy created by his wife talking to the media to defend her husband. There was speculation that Shaharyar Khan too would step down but he says he is determined to carry on. Lost in the din of scandal was an incident that highlighted a very big problem facing Pakistan cricket today. After the Lahore park attack, the Afghanistan team postponed its upcoming tour of the country. How can our team develop when it is never able to benefit from home conditions and the support of its own people? How can we attack the best coaching and managerial talent from abroad when Pakistan becomes a pariah? Yes, the long overdue retirement of Shahid Afridi will help our team play more intelligently but we certainly need to improve the domestic structure and concentrate more on fitness and fielding. A lot has to be done to fix the rotten state of Pakistan cricket today.