As expected earlier because of the shortcomings of the Pakistan cricket team, India clinched the first home series success against Pakistan in 27 years after the tourists barely managed to salvage a draw in the third and final Test at Bangalore.

Indian captain Anil Kumble gave Pakistan the target of 374 runs on the final day, however, the loss of 13 overs because of the badlight, actually assisted Pakistan in drawing the match otherwise the batsmen were probably in a hurry to catch a flight back home. Here, I believe Kumble played it too safe, he should have declared the moment India had a lead of 300. Anyway its history now and one should learn from history, but are we ready to do so?

Here, I want to recall a pleasant evening in Karachi, when the PCB organised a colourful ceremony to honour the Pakistan Cricket team for putting up a good show at the Twenty20 World Cup. I myself attended the ceremony, and was pretty thrilled after witnessing the generosity of the board chairman, Dr Nasim Ashraf, who showered the players and officials with cash awards totalling Rs 130 million. So, Mr. Chairman, are you planning to “reward” the players this time around as well? Other than the players, the selection committee was also praised at the above mentioned ceremony; therefore it would also be fitting to ask them why the chairman of the selection committee was sitting in India while the biggest domestic competition was underway in Pakistan? What was Mr. Chief Selector doing in India? I guess that would be the million dollar question. A question only he can answer. I would request him to kindly put on his thinking cap and seriously scout for new blood to fill this vacuum in our national side. In my opinion our side lacks good combinations in both bowling and batting departments.

Every test playing team is famous for one quality or the other, the Australians are mentally unbreakable, Sri Lankan are lions on the field, Indian have a formidable batting line-up, New Zealanders are hard workers, but where does Pakistan stand? They are internationally tagged as “inconsistent”. Someone would say that being inconsistent is better than being incompetent, however, I believe, if you are inconsistent then one day you will end up being incompetent too.

Coming back to the Indian tour, on which Pakistan’s performance was indeed not even worthy to write about, apart from Misbah-ul-Haq’s epic performance, nobody stood up to make their presence felt. If a bunch of these well-paid professionals can’t do it, then who should be blamed for the disaster? They all are without a doubt, good players and their respective records suggest that, but apparently their performances were not reflective of their record books’ grace. The team seemed in complete disarray and one after the other a crisis kept on falling upon the team. Initially, in the ODI series Pakistan only managed to cross the 250 mark thrice in the five-match series (322 in the second ODI at Mohali, 255 in the Fourth ODI at Gwalior and 306 in the fifth and final ODI at Jaipur).

The statistics of the ODI series suggest that the batting is a worry for Pakistan. In the 3-match test series 10 hundreds - including two double centuries were scored while only 90 wickets fell in more than 7000 deliveries, does it not give you the impression about the state of wickets? It is said that One day cricket is batsmen game, while in the test matches the bowling strength has to be strong enough to dismiss the opposition twice, but in Pakistan’s case just imagine people like Younis Khan, Salman Butt and Yasir Hameed who are playing as specialist batsmen chipped in 31 overs during the series. This only goes to show how flimsy our bowling line-up has become, hence India scored more than 500 runs twice in the series.

After going through the above mentioned stats, only batting and bowling are seemingly the worrisome areas, but I am afraid these are just the tip of the Iceberg, we are facing the dilemma, as we are desperately missing a leader who can lead our side by example. Shoaib Malik who was given the responsibility way too early, is in fact not worthy of a place in our test side, he got exposed and Younis Khan showed reluctance, and the way Younis played up the captaincy issue before the final Test is a complete failure on part of our team management. This is not the first time Younis has done so. Earlier in Inzamam’s absence from the champion’s trophy he suddenly refused the captaincy at a crowded press conference. What is his issue? If he does not want it then, then why has he been the vice-captain with Inzamam for so long? Here the Board should be fully blamed for banking on a single individual and not thinking of a backup. We seriously need to groom players to fill the gap in the absence of Inzamam, Yousuf and Younis etc. For the backup players the selectors should be looking at the young teams such as Pakistan A, U-19 and the teams playing in the ongoing Quaid-e-Azam trophy. At least two young batsmen from Karachi, Khalid Latif and Khurram Manzoor are there to be considered for their outstanding performance.

Moving on to the other problem at hand, which is the all important slot of the wicketkeeper, after Rashid Latif and Moin Khan, we had only Kamran Akmal, whose form and performance is not hidden from anyone. He has been missing chances and his flaws need to be fixed. A young wicketkeeper from Karachi, Sarfraz Ahmed, was afforded a chance to play but he was sent back after just a one-day match. Is this a way to groom players?

It’s high time to bring in the rotation policy with good effect, by resting the players who have been tried and tested many a times to incorporate with new players. The rotation policy will also provide us with a sufficient backup for injured or out-of-form players. This rotation practice should also be applied on captains and vice-captains too so that the crisis like the recent one could be avoided. To me, more than one vice-captain should be kept in view and should be groomed with opportunities in a series or two. With this strategy, we would have a few people to consider for the skipper’s job in challenging situations.

A backup of every player is the need of the hour as by doing so, only the standard of the Pakistan cricket would improve by a competition among players for their positions in the team, like Australian authorities do, in the latest world cup, nobody missed Brett Lee, but Shoaib Akhtar on the other hand, was missed big-time. Why was his absence felt? The answer is that in the last ten years, since Shoaib has been in the team, we have not been able to find a replacement for him. Therefore it’s time now to think on different lines to secure the future of Pakistan Cricket.

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