PCB’s failed model

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The twin hats — of chief selector and headcoach of the national cricket team — that Misbah-ul Haq was wearing proved too much to carry. The former skipper has thus relinquished control as chief selector after a little more than a year and decided to focus on his responsibilities as headcoach. Misbah was candid when he said he could not handle the twin-job pressure, but was a bit evasive when insisting that resigning as chief selector was purely his own decision — as it is pretty understandable for him to have come under pressure to shed one of the jobs in view of the team’s dismal performance under him.

Frankly speaking, combining the two full-time roles in one person was not a wise decision — in fact it was ridiculously unusual. The chief selector — or a selector for that matter — is supposed to visit local venues across the country to watch domestic matches and stay abreast with the budding talent, besides keeping an eye on performances of the players associated with the national team. The headcoach, on the other hand, is required to travel with the national team and focus on enhancing the performance of the players assigned to him. So one man cannot do justice to the two jobs at the same. Besides, the twin-role model adopted by the PCB is understood to have disrupted a system of checks and balances. When the headcoach gives his opinion on a player being fit for selection or not, the selection committee is there as a counter layer to judge it independently — in what amounts to judging a player fairly in the best interest of the team.

Doing the two jobs simultaneously may have been a ‘good experience’ for Misbah — as he mentioned while announcing his decision to quit as chief selector during his press conference in Lahore yesterday — but certainly not for the national team which performed below par during his stint on the twin jobs.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2020.

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