The Glory of Pakistan Cricket

The time has come to stop the empty rhetoric and fix the mess we find ourselves in the cricketing world. Many essays and op-ed pieces have been written by various past and present cricketing luminaries giving their two cents worth on how to fix Pakistani cricket and find back our “lost glory”. The fact of the matter is we never had any real period of “glory” in Pakistani cricket. We won the World Cup 1992, that one time when the gods in their benevolence gave us an enigmatic and fearless captain who, with his team’s backs to the wall, willed his way to the only major championship win ever for our country. That hour of glory, that moment of success, came more due to his leadership, and the spirit he inculcated in the team, rather than a plan or “system” of producing the best possible cricketers from Pakistan.

We have all heard, ad nauseum, about the Australian cricket system and other well meaning suggestions to fix our domestic cricket. The pundits say, institute regional teams and develop sportier pitches to produce better quality cricketers. Get domestic sponsors and pay the cricketers for their sport as professionals. All of the above are worthwhile causes and ideas in their own right. But, in my humble appeal to our cricketing gods (who will remain nameless), what is stopping us from implementing a “system” at this very moment? Do we not have the brains or the talent to implement a logical and merit-based system that nurtures talent and produces the next generation of cricketers for our national sport?

The System:

A whole lot of administrative man-hours and management gibberish has been thrown around to fix the domestic cricket structure of Pakistan. But short of revamping the whole system, why can’t we do something right now? Why not pick the guys who are performing in the existing domestic format we have working in the country? What is stopping the cricketing gods, from instituting the following “system”: Pick the top 10 performers in batting and bowling from every season to automatically be candidates for the national team camp? Obviously wicketkeepers and all-rounders would be given special consideration, but the top 10 players from this season are a reflection of the best talent and current form of the existing players and should be rewarded. At least five or six of the top 20 should be good enough to be rewarded with a central contract up for renewal every year based on performance. That, in my humble opinion is a system we can implement right now for the upcoming Indian and West Indian tours! With the incentive at the end of the domestic season of playing with the national team, every player in the national circuit will strive to be in the top 10 categories for batting and bowling and thus will automatically improve the standard of the matches played in the Domestic Circuit.

Let’s take the recently concluded Quaid-e-Azam trophy, our version of the National First Class championship recognized by the ICC. The following is a list of the top 10 performers in batting and bowling and their stats derived from PCB’s own website:


Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, 2004-05 Batting - Most Runs
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Name         Mat     I     NO     Runs     HS     Ave     100     50     Ct     St     Team
Faisal Athar 10 19 2 942 128 55.41 4 3 2 - HYD-R
Hasan Raza 10 16 1 754 208 50.26 2 4 6 - KARACHI-RB
Aamer Bashir 8 13 2 738 201 67.09 3 1 8 - MULTAN-R
Adil Nisar 10 19 1 730 203* 40.55 1 4 5 - QUETTA-R
Rizwan Ahmed 10 19 1 716 76* 39.77 - 5 4 - HYD-R
Agha Sabir 10 17 0 701 129 41.23 3 3 5 - KARACHI-RW
Farhan Adil 10 15 3 699 148 58.25 3 1 5 - KARACHI-RB
Faisal Iqbal 10 18 3 668 108 44.53 1 4 9 - KARACHI-RW
Wajahatullah Wasti 11 18 5 666 111 51.23 1 6 17 - PESH-R
Misbah-ul-Haq 10 15 3 658 129 54.83 2 3 11 - FSLBD-R


Similarly, in the bowling department:

Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, 2004-05 Bowling - Most Wickets
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Name Mat O M R W Ave Best 5 10 SR Econ Team

Shahid Nazir 10 246 59 663 52 12.75 6-18 4 - 28.3 2.69 FSLBD-R
Waqar Ahmed 10 274.5 57 923 49 18.83 7-67 2 - 33.6 3.35 PESH-R
Fazl-e-Akbar 11 311 68 846 47 18.00 5-26 2 - 39.7 2.72 PESH-R
Abdur Rauf 10 371.1 45 1336 47 28.42 5-60 4 - 47.3 3.59 MULTAN-R
Imran Tahir 10 245 56 806 45 17.91 7-118 1 - 32.6 3.28 LAHORE-RB
Rajesh Ramesh 9 330 57 1161 45 25.80 6-48 2 1 44.0 3.51 KARACHI-RW
Riaz Afridi 7 184.1 41 533 40 13.32 6-61 3 - 27.6 2.89 PESH-R
Yasir Arafat 8 242.4 56 742 40 18.55 5-22 4 - 36.4 3.05 RAWAL-R
Wasim Khan 10 278 54 919 40 22.97 5-54 3 1 41.7 3.30 LAHORE-RB
Arshad Khan 11 314.5 77 815 39 20.89 5-62 2 1 48.4 2.58 PESH-R


Have a close look at these numbers folks! Not one player from the top 10 list of PCB’s own domestic season made it to the Australian tour. Some of these guys (Shahid Nazir, Hasan Raza, Yasir Arafat to name a few) have been performing year in, year out, and not getting selected while mediocre performers get the nod and the results are there for all of us to suffer through. I am not saying that the team to Australia should be completely scrapped, but what then is the purpose of having a Domestic First Class tournament when none of the consistent performers of that year are even called to the national camp? What incentive do these players have to keep toiling away in the barren landscape of Pakistani domestic cricket if they know that there is no systemic way for them to ever get selected?

Numbers don’t lie folks! That is the first thing they teach you in management school.

How many times do we have to see young and promising careers being destroyed before we start selecting the kids who do go out and perform in our existing domestic cricket structure? Why do we have to demean the founder’s name in a championship when none of the performers have a fair shot in the meritocratic system that he had envisioned for his country? Since the advent of the Internet and Domestic cricket broadcasting on TV, every player’s performance is available to the whole world to see and analyze. PCB’s own website displays the performance of these players and yet we still have to listen to pathetic excuses from the Chairman and Chief Selector on how our past glory ran away with the British Empire!

I, for one, am sick of seeing Inzamam, time and time again, hang his head low as he walks back to the pavilion after another loss of his wicket knowing well that Pakistan’s chances of winning have gone down the drain with him. His slow and dejected walk says it all for the state of Pakistani cricket. His broad shoulders can’t take it anymore and neither should we be reclined to accept our fate as a loser team.

I ask the cricketing gods this: How many Chairmen of national cricket boards in other countries run to the President’s Secretariat to select a Committee member, or captain of their cricket team? Is that the system we are destined to live in? Is this part of our golden mantra of “Enlightened Moderation” where a Chief of Army Staff-cum-president-cum-savior of the nation, picks every lowly member of a sport’s administration team? Does El Presidente have nothing better to do? Can you imagine Tony Blair secretly installing the English team captain and approving the name of the Chief Selector? Do you hear of President Azad’s military secretary running behind the scenes to nominate his hand-picked person to be the next executive of BCCI? Don’t we have any shame left?

Wake up my fellow Pakistanis. Demand the establishment to quit taking us for fools and to start performing their jobs as we pay and require them to do. The solutions to our cricketing woes are there to be implemented right now. In this day and age, you either do your job or pack up and leave. This is not an experimentation lab for retired officers and bureaucrats. I appeal to you Oh mighty cricketing gods, you don’t need to hire foreign consultants to tell you, that if you pick the top 10 performers of every season, run them through the national cricket academy, and select the best among them to play for the country, that we can bring our infamous gori, oops “glory”, back from those darned Brits.