The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This popular maxim does seem to hold water when discussing the case of Pakistan cricket.

I won’t go too far back in history to prove my point.

Take the 2003 World Cup for example. Pakistan crashed out at the first hurdle in Southern Africa and the country’s cricket administrators promised that they will turn things around. Four years later, Pakistan repeated that embarrassment at World Cup 2007 in the Caribbean as they got thrown out in the first round following a shocking defeat against Ireland.

Fast forward to today. Pakistan failed to live up to expectations at the World Twenty20 championship in Bangladesh and now there is talk of accountability and sweeping changes. But will things change?

Well, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Najam Sethi sounds sincere about turning things around in the lead up to World Cup 2015. He is gung-ho about it, something that he has proved by showing Mohammad Hafeez the door and announcing plans regarding sweeping changes in the national cricket set-up in the coming weeks.

But sincerity is just one of the many ingredients required to achieve a much-needed turnaround. Unfortunately, many of the remaining pieces of this seemingly impossible jigsaw puzzle are missing.

The first and foremost one is a professional team that can actually help transform Sethi’s wise sincere promises into concrete action. Today, the top-heavy board is blessed with almost the same pack of senior officials that served as courtiers for the likes of Ijaz Butt and Zaka Ashraf, two of Sethi’s predecessors. With this pack still at helm the Board would be insane to expect that there would actually be a turnaround in the lead up to next year’s World Cup. It would be like allowing the same people to do the same things over and over again and expecting different results — insanity! You don’t have to be an Albert Einstein to come to that conclusion.

Sethi has spent enough time at the PCB headquarters in Lahore to know that he is captaining a side that is as blessed with match-winners as the desert of Thar is blessed with life-giving crops. Frankly, most of our cricket officials are less equipped to put the sport back on track than Mohammad Hafeez is to face Dale Steyn on a greentop.

But either Sethi has decided to put up with it or he is holding some aces up his sleeves. In either case, I would be surprised if he actually manages to pull up a Houdini’s act by carrying out any sweeping changes in the team and its management successfully. I will be surprised if the board, if it continues to rely on the same management, manages to succeed in achieving ambitious goals like launching a professional Twenty20 league and things like that.

Butt tried and failed and so did Ashraf. Whether Sethi, a cricketing novice till a few months back, will be able succeed where others failed remains to be seen.

Personally, I believe that the best course of action for Sethi and the board will be to do some well-planned multi-tasking.

The primary aim should be to turn the board into a competent organisation where the right man is given the right job.

But it’s easier said than done.

At the moment, the board is infested with vested interest elements. They do not just lack the will to put things in order but also the competence to achieve much-sought after goals like fixing our domestic structure. They are going to resist any change that is aimed at bringing professionalism in the board.

But if Pakistan cricket is to be revived then these elements should be rooted out ruthlessly just like cancer cells. That is because nothing good is going to come out if the process of change is given in the hands of these very elements.

Is Sethi up to this Herculean task? Well, only time will tell.

But the idea of putting its house in order doesn’t mean that the board cannot go for other vital steps like finding new captains for the various formats or hiring better coaches to fix perennial problems like our team’s unreliable batters and butter-fingered fielders. These plans cannot be shelved either. That’s why I insisted that there is a lot of multi-tasking that needs to be done.

The good thing is that we don’t have much international cricket to look forward to in the coming months. It’s a timely hiatus and the PCB shouldn’t waste it.

It should go back to the drawing board and discuss the reasons why Pakistan continues to be an unreliable team across all formats. It’s a team that is capable of winning a world title in limited-overs cricket or routing the world best team in Tests. But more often than not it’s a team that is capable of disappointing its fans.

That needs to change. But real and positive change can only come from within. Only if the Board is willing to change itself can we expect any lasting improvement in the way our cricketers perform at the international level. We cannot expect them to play like Australia or South Africa while we continue to run cricket in this country on our whims and fancies.

It won’t happen no matter how many captains or coaches are replaced or even if older players are forced to make way for younger ones. It’s the system that produces these players which is flawed. It’s the board that allows this system to continue that is flawed.

These chronic flaws need to be deleted from our cricket system. It won’t be easy. But nothing good in life comes easy. In the past, our cricket chiefs have almost always taken the easy way out by shying away from taking difficult decisions. Once again, Pakistan cricket is going through a time where tough decisions are not just an option but a necessity.

Sethi can act like his predecessors and take the easy way out. He can change the captain and bring in new coaches and then hope for the best. But that would be like burying his head in the sand in the hope that all of Pakistan cricket’s problems will just go away. Or he can help the PCB transcend its past mistakes. The choice is his.