The cricket conundrum

Cricket is not a one-man show; it is a combination of factors for which much work is required to be done by Pak team

What does one say about the 2015 World Cup face-off/match/battle between Pakistan and India in Adelaide on February 15? Much has been, much is, and much will be said/written about the match that saw Pakistan lose in a manner that leaves too much to be said/written about. Or could one be at a loss of words? May I blame it on the ICC, and its marketing team? I mean, all of us need to vent about what went wrong, so why not blame the ICC for creating so much hype about one of the opening matches that most of us got caught up in that, but ended up watching the drubbing the Pakistan cricket team got at the hands, ball, bat and fielding of the Indian team. The ‘traditional rivals’ met in a superbly uneven game, and man, what a debacle that was. For us. The team in green. The colour of love and expectation from a team that leaves little to be happy about after every big game. Invariably.

The expert analyses of the whats and hows of the Pak team’s defeat abound, but for regular Pakistanis like me, who’ve been watching the Pak team play longer than it took Inzi to learn to run between the wickets without getting run-out, it’s incredulous how so little significance is attached to what weakens the team. Even to mere cricket watchers like me. Don’t we all dig the expression of outrage, even on things that don’t matter? This endows us with a flawless opportunity to hit the perfectly flawed target: the team that has dashed our hopes too many times. O the sorrow of that.

For starters, it’s always the misplaced importance that’s assigned to any big game between Pakistan and India, putting so huge a pressure on the team — ours — that it ends up playing a game that’s in no way the performance one would expect in a Twenty20 or an Asia Cup match, leave alone a World Cup match. Despite having won more One-Day Internationals —72-50 — than India in bilateral encounters, when it comes to the tournament that truly matters — yes, the World Cup — Pakistan have perfected the art of losing to India in a manner that is beyond cricketing comprehension. Mine. It’s one thing to lose; it’s an entirely different ball game to lose by 76 runs — 76 runs are way too many in a 50-over game. As India celebrates, and justifiably so, we stand at 6-0 — O the horror of that — and… oh never mind, there’s WC2019. Beat India then?

As Younus Khan got out too early for too little, there was unanimous outpouring of anger as to why he was made to open rather than playing him at his usual number of three or four. The World Cup positioning of players in any team is often decided months in advance, training them with the purpose to hone their strength. Even in cricket, there’s a resorting to ad hocism, and what a fiasco that is.

Don’t even get me started on the PCB chairman drama here. The musical-chairs syndrome of the head of the cricket board is one indication of the politicisation of the most popular and prominent sport in Pakistan, enabling, consequently, an air of uncertainty down the hierarchy dynamic that decides the fate of cricket here. While the fight for the kursi continues (eenie meenie, Sethi, Shehryar), negligible is the attention given to the structure that could help in the establishment of a solid team. No high quality first class cricket within Pakistan; no real talent-scouting camps; no attention paid to training of new players; insufficient attention given to improvement of weak spots (Pak fielding is a nightmare, while Pak players are some of the worst catch-droppers, as I reiterate, in the history of any game); discipline exercises (how to get rid of the domino effect — the team falling to pieces after the loss of initial two-three wickets is commonplace).

Cricket is not a one-man show; it is a combination of factors for which much work is still required to be done by the Pak team. One Misbahul Haq may prevent a washout, but he is one man. Without a Saeed Ajmal, the bowling side is as dull as a PTV cricket transmission. And without immediate measures — even stopgap — to improve the quality of performance, the chances of reaching even the quarter-finals remain as flaky as the last alliance between the PPP and the MQM.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th,  2015.

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