It was on the sidelines of the three-match One-day International series against Sri Lanka in Karachi that I met Ehsan Mani, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). It turned out to be a long discussion on Pakistan cricket and inevitably Sarfraz’s captaincy future also came up.
“So do you support Sarfraz Ahmed as captain?” I asked Mani point blank. Despite all the criticism hurled at the embattled skipper, was Sarfraz still his first choice as captain?
Replying, matter-of-factly, Mani said he did support Sarfraz.
“I must say that Sarfraz has had a very positive impact on the Pakistan team,” he told me.
“Under him we won the Champions Trophy. On its day, the team plays very well and can beat the best in the world.”
But Mani did complain about Pakistan’s Achilles heel – their chronic lack of consistency.
“The problem with the Pakistan team is a lack of consistency and that’s because of a lack of professionalism,” he said.
Mani pinned his hopes on Misbah-ul-Haq, who had taken over as Pakistan’s head coach and chief selector. “That shortcoming can be overcome with the arrival of Misbah,” he commented.
Mani stressed that he saw Sarfraz as Pakistan’s best option when it came to leading the team. However, he did hint at a mid-term succession plan.
“I think Sarfraz remains our best choice for captaincy. But he is not getting any younger. We need a succession plan. Today when I ask them whom we should make captain instead of Sarfraz, they tell me that we have no other options. This is really sad. Over the years we haven’t groomed any one for the leadership role.”
A couple of days after the interview Pakistan wrapped up the ODI series with a 2-0 win with one of the games washed out by unseasonal rains.
With powerful men like Mani in his corner and six consecutive wins in the ODI format, Sarfraz’s captaincy seemed secure, at least for the moment.
Then Lahore happened.
For some inexplicable reason, Misbah rang controversial changes in Pakistan’s T20 team – ranked number one in the world, bringing back the notorious duo of Ahmed Shehzad and Umar Akmal in the playing eleven. Pakistan flopped miserably in the three-match T20I series and were whitewashed by what was almost a second string Sri Lanka team.
Sarfraz’s critics, who had been sharpening their knives for quite some time, went for the kill and an under-pressure PCB leadership decided to sack him as captain in all three formats. As if that wasn’t enough, the man, who was hailed as a national hero two years back when his team swam against the tide and won the ICC Champions Trophy, was also dropped for the upcoming tour of Australia which will include T20I matches as well.
It took just three T20 games for the PCB to give up its succession plan as it opted to bring in Azhar Ali as Test captain. Babar Azam, 25, was given charge of the T20 team just a year before the ICC T20 World Cup in Australia.
By doing that, the Board hasn’t dealt with things any differently from what had been happening in the past. Such knee-jerk reactions have been the hallmark of PCB chiefs in the past. It seems Mani’s campaign to bring professionalism in Pakistan cricket and the PCB remains a distant goal.
To be fair, PCB bosses did find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Since Mani took PCB’s charge last year, things have generally gone south for Pakistan cricket. They crumbled in last year’s Asia Cup in the UAE and were unable to stop their slump in ICC Test Rankings. Pakistan failed to qualify for the World Cup in England this summer. Their T20 series whitewash turned out to be the proverbial last straw.
For PCB it turned out to be a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures.
Were they justified in sacking Sarfraz? Have they made the right choices by handpicking Azhar and Babar?
Frankly, Sarfraz hasn’t been helping his own cause, at least not in Test and ODI formats. His batting form, which helped Sarfraz gain captaincy in all three formats, had long gone. And as captain, he did cut a sorry figure, time and again, during the World Cup in England.
He needed to regain his form but despite losing a lot of weight post World Cup, there were no signs that runs will start flowing from Sarfraz’s bat anytime soon.
The immediate task for Pakistan was to prepare a Test team, and perhaps a new captain, for the two-Test assignments in Australia. Once a decision was made to get rid of Sarfraz, they pondered over all the options which included elevating top-order batsman Shan Masood as the new Test captain. But in the end, PCB played it safe by handing the captaincy to the seasoned Azhar Ali.
Azhar, 34, failed as Pakistan’s ODI captain. He might be one of Pakistan’s premier Test batters but just take a look at his last seven Test innings – he has scored just 64 runs from them. He isn’t really a man at the top of his game. Will he succeed as captain in Australia, where Pakistan have quite an abysmal record? It seems highly unlikely.
But appointing Azhar isn’t PCB’s worst step. That move was made in the T20 direction.
By sacking Sarfraz, PCB has dealt yet another blow to the T20 squad, just a year before the 20-over World Cup. When Sarfraz took over the command of the T20 team, Pakistan were in bad shape. They had failed miserably in the T20 World Cup in India under the command of Shahid Afridi.
But under Sarfraz, Pakistan were soon back on their feet and were involved in an unprecedented winning spree that took them to the top of the world T20I rankings.
It doesn’t seem like a wise decision. And the fact that it was taken on the basis of the three losses in Lahore makes it look even worse. The disaster in Lahore was primarily Misbah’s fault. But it was Sarfraz, who was made to pay for it.
And why reward Babar Azam for it? Just like most of his team-mates, he also under-performed in the T20 series. The world’s number one T20 batsman managed scores of 3, 13 and 31 against an average bowling attack in his hometown and no one even raised an eyebrow. In comparison, the out-of-form Sarfraz contributed 17, 26, 24 to the team’s cause in the three games. But while Babar was given the crown, it was the guillotine that greeted the captain.
Khalid Hussain is Editor Sports of The News
khalidhrajgmail.com