Cricket's downward spiral: who's to blame!

Bangladesh cricket team's historic clean sweep in the two-Test series against Pakistan in Rawalpindi has been a truly remarkable effort, and is a testament to their new-found maturity in international cricket.

More significantly, the convincing manner of their victory, especially in the backdrop of the massive political turmoil back home, speaks volumes about the players' resilience and skills, serving as a quintessential lesson.

In a stark contrast, Pakistan team's rapid downward spiral has been alarming, to say the least. In fact, the team's regressed state, that has seen them losing eight Test matches on the trot besides failure to make the semifinals of the 50-over World Cup in India and the T20 World Cup held in the US and West Indies, has given an all-new meaning to the term 'rock bottom'.

While unpredictability has been a familiar trait with the Pakistan teams during the past decades, the string of defeats of late to minnows USA, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan in the ODIs, and now in the Tests at home against Bangladesh, makes the mind boggle.

For a cricketing nation whose success rate ranks only third behind Australia and England in history, the decline is a sorry sight for the millions of fans at home and abroad.

For the knowledgeable critics and followers of the game, though, the pattern has been all too obvious for nearly two decades.

In a country increasingly shorn of democratic values, it is little surprise that merit is heavily compromised in the Pakistan Cricket Board – the game's governing body - where Ad hocism has taken root.

Since 1998, hand-picked favourites of the respective ruling regimes in the country have taken turns as PCB chairmen to run the game in their own clueless manner, only to ruin it.

For a country that made its international cricket debut back in 1952, nearly 72 years ago, no real effort has been made either by the governments or the PCB heads to streamline the game on scientific lines or to systemically groom the tremendous raw talent in the country.

The chaos prevalent in Pakistan Cricket, both on and off the field, can be gauged by the fact that the national team has had four captains including Babar Azam, Shan Masood, Shaheen Afridi and Shadab Khan leading the national sides in the past two years while five head coaches including Mickey Arthur, Grant Bradburn, Azhar Mahmood, Mohammad Hafeez and Jason Gillespie have managed the teams.

To top it all, as many as four PCB chairmen namely Najam Sethi, Ramiz Raja, Zaka Ashraf and the incumbent Mohsin Naqvi have held the reins at the PCB during this period.

More detrimental have been the tell-tale signs of the pool of players deemed good enough to represent the national sides shrinking considerably. Besides, the poor state of domestic cricket and docile pitches have failed to groom the batters and the bowlers for the competitive international cricket standards.

Even the PCB's much trumpeted flagship project, the Pakistan Super League (PSL), has lost its sheen owing to the continuous absence of leading international players. As it is, the PSL is a T20 league which does nothing to prepare the cricketers for the longer, more competitive format like Test cricket.

Moreover, the lure of the international T20 leagues has seen more and more Pakistan players opting for them since the money is really good.

It is a pity that the bosses in Pakistan cricket have neither had the time nor the inclination to carry an overhaul to set things right. Sitting pretty in their cushy jobs, handed to them in a platter by the respective regimes, they are busy working on their own respective agendas which primarily relate to saving their own skin and seat, or making good money at the expense of the country's cricket.