From mercurial to stable
AUSTRALIA won the series 5-0 the last time these two teams met in ODIs. Can the mercurial Pakistan team turn the tables in #CWC19 today?” ICC posted this on the 12th of June in 2019 on all major social media platforms.
In 2017, a famous English commentator, Naser Hussain said, “Pakistan cricket team at its best, one minute down, next minute up”. In recent times the team has been improving, especially in the shorter format of the game.
Despite outstanding performances throughout 2021, ICC posted the following statement on the 24th of October 2021, “Can the Mavericks steal the show again.”
But, the question is why does the Pakistan Cricket Team have such a reputation? Why do they get considered inconsistent? Is this because of lack of talent or is it because of inexperienced players or is it due to the poor policies of the management?
Many people believe that Pakistan lacks talent. Is it really the case? When we talk about talent, I personally think that Pakistan has loads of it. In my opinion, Pakistan is the richest country in the world in regards to talent in this sport.
Pakistan possesses players such as Tabish Khan who has 599 First Class wickets and still he has played only one international match. Why? Because the current playing 11 is vastly talented too.
In the current playing 11, we find batting stars such as Babar Azam who got ranked as the player of the month recently, and in bowling, Pakistan has gems such as Shaheen Shah Afridi.
I believe that if the Pakistan Cricket team would have lacked talent, it wouldn’t have won the 1992 World Cup, or the 2009 T20 World Cup, or the Champions Trophy in 2017. Thus there has to be some other reason.
Moving on to lack of experience I believe that inexperienced players have a very major role in the building of reputation.
The team that played Zimbabwe recently had only two players who had played more than 30 tests, they were Azhar Ali and Babar Azam.
Yes, I do understand that new players need to get a chance and new players adapt to the modern game pretty well however old is gold. The experienced players bring great benefits to the team.
Firstly, an experienced player generally knows the conditions of each country well, and thus he can guide his juniors and that will help the team in adapting to the new conditions and humiliating defeats such as those against Australia in 2019 can be avoided. Secondly, the experienced players help calm the junior players down in pressure situations and are generally very calm at all times as they have learned the art of controlling their nerves.
Lastly, they understand the fact that all games can’t be won and they also understand that winning games consistently matters and occasional wins are of no importance and this then gets transferred into the juniors.
Without senior players, batting collapses are very common, the team doesn’t cope well with pressure and lastly, they usually celebrate their wins too much and get distracted. Getting distracted results in humiliating defeats in future games.
Another problem with new players is that they are not properly groomed before exposure to the outside world and because of this the players often start to develop interests in tourism etc which harms the team.
In a few cases, such as the case of Muhammad Amir, the young players are easily exploited, and that results in humiliation for the country.
At current, Pakistan is suffering a lot from this problem as senior players such as Shoaib Malik and Muhammad Hafeez are largely ignored. These players did get selected for the 2021 T-20 World Cup and they contributed a lot. If their involvement is increased, it will do wonders for Pakistan.
The team also has poor policies and the policymakers are often under the spotlight for this reason. Two big examples are that firstly Pakistan Cricket Team Management had no checks to ensure that the players didn’t follow an improper diet plan.
This meant that the player’s fitness wasn’t monitored properly and that obviously resulted in the deterioration of fielding. The Management was scrutinized for this after the Cricket World Cup in 2019.
The management did respond promptly to this and ensured that players didn’t eat anything oily and gave out diet plans.
The effort of the management is applaudable as many players such as Sarfaraz have reduced a lot of weight and the fielding standard has risen up sharply.
Secondly, the management is criticized a lot for its decision of not having a proper psychologist on board.
This means that the players have to tackle all their mental pressures themselves and that affects their performance.
The psychologist can help solve the inconsistency in the performances as the psychologist can firstly help the players with family problems. Secondly, the psychologist can help in re-motivating the team after a defeat and can help in making sure that the players don’t get overconfident after wins.
The management has addressed a lot of problems and that has helped in improving the performance however the psychologist’s problem remains unsolved and I believe that solving this will have good effects on the team.
In my opinion, the lack of experience in the team costs Pakistan the most. I believe that Pakistan has immense talent, this is because we see that many Pakistanis such as Zaheer Abbas, Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar, and most recently Babar Azam are known all around the globe for their talent and if Pakistan lacked talent, it wouldn’t have won all major ICC events once.
I believe that the poor policies, especially the lack of a psychologist have significant impacts but teams used to perform well in the past without them too.
The lack of experienced players is the biggest problem as we have seen this factor causing problems for Pakistan again and again.
In 2010, the England spot-fixing scandal is one of the examples. Moreover, the junior players develop other aspirations if exposed to foreign conditions without grooming, the senior players help in grooming the juniors.
Thus I believe that involving more experienced players such as Wahab Riaz as well as the hiring of a psychologist will bring great benefits to Pakistan and it will develop from a mercurial team to a solid, undefeatable team. The team has performed well in the Bangladesh series and new caps are being added.
I hope that with the new PCB Chairman and the new coaches the team will excel, leaving behind this mercurial and unpredictable legacy.
—The writer is contributing columnist.
