Miandad takes the back seat

Pakistan batting consultant accepts Waqar as the sole strategist, refuses to travel with team.

LAHORE: Former Pakistan captain Javed Miandad, who has refused to travel with the team to New Zealand, said that the team needed only one strategist. The batting legend was hired by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) as a batting consultant and became the latest addition to the panel of coaches headed by another former captain Waqar Younis.

“I refused to travel with the team only to avoid conflicts in the coaching department,” Miandad told reports at the Gaddafi Stadium. “Younis is the head coach and should be in command. Players need to follow him instead of getting confused over the presence of another coach.”

Miandad earlier turned down the role of a full-time batting consultant and expressed his unwillingness to travel with the team. Following the PCB’s offer to Miandad, Younis also marked territory and suggested that the addition of Miandad will not affect his role in any way. However, Miandad accepted the offer and offered tips to the Pakistan batsmen during the ongoing training camp underway in Lahore.

“I’m a very strong believer that in cricket one must follow one approach to avoid confusion and with two people for the same purpose, it doesn’t help. This is what I conveyed to the PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt as well, as it his [Younis] duty to coach the team and make the strategies.”

The former captain, who has had three coaching stints with the Pakistan team, said the training camp was the right time to consult the batsmen.

“I can’t go with the team because all I can do is pass on my exposure to the players in the batting department. And this is the right time to tell them because tours are the time to execute one’s learning.”

Miandad, also a PCB director general, felt that there was plenty of batting experience and talent in the national team but the players just needed to work more consistently. “I always told the players that you are always learning, no matter how experienced you are. In the end, it’s all about fine tuning them and mentally preparing for difficult conditions and situations.”

Miandad, who was deputy to Imran Khan during Pakistan’s victorious World Cup campaign in 1992, said that the players needed to realise the honour of playing for their country.

“There are so many other things for the batsman to take on including the temperament, batting conditions, etc for the batsman to cope with. More importantly, players must take the responsibility that they are representing the country. They should realise that they are picked up from a huge pool of players.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2010.