PCB haunted by the ghost of captaincy past

The PCB is once again faced with the captaincy issue that has haunted the management for years.

Once again, the Pakistan Cricket Board faces an issue that has haunted it for years - captaincy. Since the 2007 World Cup, the team has changed six captains for all formats of the game and now, at such a crucial time, with the World Cup just 40 days away, the PCB management is stuck once more. After four years of preparation teams across the world are ready to perform - but the question of who will be captain remains the bane of our team's existence.

The PCB has not announced the captain for the current One Day Internationals series against New Zealand yet. The management seems to have certain reservations about Shahid Afridi’s leadership qualities and his individual skills with regards to his recent performance against New Zealand in theTwenty20s.

Instead of Afridi, the PCB is eyeing Misbahul Haq for the position.  He is playing his first Test series as skipper and has done a pretty good job. There can be no doubt that there are certain issues regarding Afridi’s leadership. However, the PCB needs to realise whether they have another choice or not. After all, Misbahul Haq has just played two ODI matches in the last 12 months and has scored 34 runs, while Afridi is the leading runs scorer for Pakistan with 601 runs and 19 wickets in 18 matches. He also scored two centuries. Playing as a captain in 14 matches, he scored 475 runs. Therefore, there is a huge difference in the performance of both players. Misbah was dropped because of his deteriorating performance and now he is expected to be given captaincy because of his performance in recent Tests?

One would expect the PCB to understand that there is a difference in captaining a Test side and an ODI one. No doubt Afridi has failed to win even a single series for Pakistan so far, but frankly (and unfortunately) at the moment he is the best we’ve got

If we look at the last four years of Pakistan cricket, the PCB has shown impatience and inconsistency regarding its decisions, most importantly with respect to captaincy. As mentioned earlier, it changed six captains in four years which included:

1.Shoaib Malik

2. Younus Khan

3. Muhammad Yousuf

4. Shahid Afridi

5. Salman Butt

6. Misbahul Haq

How can anyone expect Pakistan to win this World up when our mastermind PCB is still perplexed about the captaincy issue?