Written By: Omair Alavi

Pakistan cricket team is heading for a change that has come at the right time. The whole country is feeling better on the ouster of Misbah-ul-Haq than on the naming of Mohammad Hafeez as the captain of the Twenty20 side, but will that make things better or worse? Will Mohammad Hafeez be able to succeed where Misbah couldn’t? It’s a debate that is going around, and one feels that had the selectors did their bit honestly, the debate would have never happened.

My argument is simple – any team with former captain Shoaib Malik and Shahid Afridi in it will always have infightings, groupings and will be looked at with doubt. Shoaib Malik may be the most successful all-rounder in the domestic circuit but then he is also the most successful captain. Shouldn’t he have been the skipper since most of the players in the squad are from his Sialkot Stallions side? No. In fact he shouldn’t have been in the side as no team needs a player who has a political backing rather than merit to support his claims. He will always be an influence on the youngsters and that will affect the team collectively. One must remember that during the team’s tour to New Zealand a couple of years back, former test cricketer and commentator Ian Smith termed him as a cricketer who ‘can’t bowl, can’t field and can’t bat!’

As for Shahid Afridi, he may be popular in the media and in his fans but no captain would want him to influence the team in his usual bad way. In his autobiography Controversially Yours, Shoaib Akhtar names Afridi as the mole in the side, who leaks news to the media so that they can return the favour when he is in trouble. Be it chewing the cricket ball, tampering with the pitch or beating a fan who was miles away from his daughter, Afridi has always received benefit of the doubt from the media. He may be a good cricketer, but his influence is anything but good. He either needs to show that he has matured as a cricketer after 16 years or pave way to youngsters who are waiting for him to retire.

One must be happy that so many youngsters have been included in the Twenty20 squad, but there are a few who could have been avoided like Shakeel Ansar, the new wicket keeper in the side. The guy from Sialkot will turn 34 this November and has no prospect in any form of the game, yet he was named due to his recent performance. Fair enough. But then, Mohammad Sami managed to take just one wicket in the recent T20 domestic event, and his inclusion in the format is based on his performance in the Bangladesh Premier League. Interesting…

Cricket enthusiasts may criticize the return of Faisal Iqbal in the Test side but for me, he remains a better choice than Shoaib Malik. He is an excellent fielder and had a great season with the bat. In fact, when he was dropped from the side a couple of years back, he was in good nick and managed to score half centuries and scores in 40s Down Under in conditions that were alien to him. What stuns most of the cricket fraternity is the return of Imran Farhat who has been tried, tested and labelled as a failure. The only logic behind his inclusion is the fact that most of the selectors are friends of his father-in-law Mohammad Ilyas who was the predecessor of the current chief selector Iqbal Qasim!

On the whole, three separate Pakistan teams will depart for Sri Lanka later this month, a first in the history of Pakistan cricket. A few extra steps here and there would have ensured a winning combination, and one hopes that in the two Twenty20s Internationals, five ODIs and three Tests, Pakistan manages to emerge as a victorious side, rather than a troubled team.

By: Omair Alavi

It was just five years ago that Mohammad Yousuf became the highest run getter in a calendar year. It was the same year in which he won the ICC Award as well as accolades from all over the world. He was methodical, had the urge to score runs, and his record spoke of his achievements.

In a test career spanning 90 matches, Yousuf had scored 7530 runs at an average of 52.29 whereas in his 288-match ODI career, he had accumulated 9720 runs at an average of nearly 42. Impressive, isn’t it? But then why isn’t he in the team?

There are many factors due to which Mohammad Yousuf is no more wearing the Pakistani colours and religion has nothing to do with it. It took him a few years to transform from Yousuf Youhana to Mohammad Yousuf, but it took him a few minutes to become the villain from the Good Samaritan. No captain would want him in his side after what he did with Younis Khan.

He is credited as the one who gathered most of the players in the side and made them take an oath on the Holy Quran against the captain considered to be too demanding! The management knew of this act and didn’t do much as the manager Yawar Saeed was also present in the ceremony. Will you take Mohammad Yousuf in your side after this? No one will.

Secondly, his decision to play for Indian Cricket League made him a rebel, and he was banned from representing Pakistan. He did make a comeback during the Australian tour where he didn’t do much, and was sacked. Yousuf this time responded with a conditional retirement, meaning he would play if asked to, and would not play if not considered.

He has done that on three occasions now, and it is such inconsistency in character that has made even his most staunch supporters criticize him. He did get a chance to show his skills against England during the ‘Spot-fixing’ tour, but he seemed a shadow of his old self, since he didn’t bat well and was stupefied whenever fielding.

As per chief selector Iqbal Qasim’s views, Yousuf can only play if he plays in domestic cricket, if he does better than the rest, if the team needs him, which doesn’t seem realistically possible. For those who don’t know, Qasim was the chief selector who quit because the team surrendered against Australia ‘Down Under’, the tour after which Yousuf was banned altogether.

Secondly, with youngsters like Azhar Ali, Asad Shafiq and Umar Akmal coming into the national side and cementing their place with good performances, Yousuf doesn’t stand a chance. Not only is he a bad influence on the newcomers but also on the whole team, something the current number 4 batsman Younis Khan knows better than anyone.

The prolific batsman of yesteryears has not played domestic cricket for more than a year now as he was busy preaching alongside his former team mates Saeed Anwar and Inzamam ul Haq. He missed whatever tournaments were played on the first class circuit including the National T20 and National One-Day Tournament, whereas also skipped the first class matches for no reason. Until and unless he plays, scores and shows his commitment to play for the national side, he stays out.

Talking to the media isn't his forte!

In modern cricket, public speaking and handling the media is as important as performing on the field, but Pakistani cricketers are yet to master the art of first listening, and then speaking their mind. Because when it comes to the latter, they say things they are not expected to! Pun intended on Saeed Ajmal’s recent interview in English.

”Someone is telling me my action is bad but the ICC (has) allow(ed) me to bowl 23.5 degrees because my arm is not good, but that’s my problem,” he said. ”Apart from that there is no problem with my action – it has been cleared by the ICC.”

Ajmal taking one of his 24 wickets against England!

That’s what Ajmal said in his broken English but it got ‘front-page’ coverage in English media. Even the English know that Saeed Ajmal can’t speak English properly and that it is not even his second language (Urdu and Punjabi being the first two), but it seems that they may have manipulated the translation to cater their own needs.

Both ICC and the PCB came to the rescue and said in separate statements that Ajmal may be confused by the way his elbow hangs when his arm is by his side and the flexed angle, which are 15 and 23 degrees respectively.

Whatever the case, Saeed Ajmal got a taste of his own medicine i.e. the doosra. He may have won the man of the series award for his 24 wickets in the three matches, yet Saeed Ajmal was in no way given a free hand by the management to speak his mind.

Saeed Ajmal - Flexing his arms!

Without informing the manager or any other player, he let the English media trap him with a doosra, but this time it was off-the-field. The interviewer asked the off-spinner whether he was allowed to bowl the doosra by the ICC and Ajmal, in whatever angrezi he could gather, told them about an accident that damaged his elbow, the ICC clearance he got two years back and why he thinks his bowling action is not faulty.

That gave the English media enough to attack their tormentor-in-chief as they brilliantly presented the interview as Saeed Ajmal saying that his arm bends at 23.5 degrees (instead of the allowed 15), that an accident damaged his arm (instead of elbow as Saeed meant) and that despite all this, the ICC had cleared him to bowl the doosra and the teesra!

Well done English media! The player who had tormented the ‘number 1’ team in the world, the one they still can’t face with confidence, the one who smiles all the time on and off-the-field was shown to be a ‘cheat’, only after he destroyed the English cricket team.

But the best part is, Saeed Ajmal doesn’t understand English, something that will have an important part in his performance in the limited overs matches. How? Well he will apply the ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ formula and not only stay away from the media but also from the newspapers.

Who knows he might ‘finally’ unleash the teesra in an attempt to make the English pay for what they did!

Pakistan cricket team is one of the best cricket teams in the world, if we consider their form of the past 12 months. What makes the team’s resurgence even more interesting is the fact that it played without a coach during the last few months of the year.

Yes, I know they had Mohsin Hassan Khan as the coach but whoever has followed cricket knows that Mohsin is anything but a coach. In fact, he needs a person to remind him that he is the coach.

A Coach For The Players!

While the best teams in the world go through a rigorous routine to improve their fielding, Pakistani players play ‘catch catch’ like school kids in a playground to get ready for Test cricket.

Mohsin Khan is not the one to blame here because one of his predecessors Intikhab Alam also ‘excelled’ in this type of ‘catching practice’. The reason was the coach’s inability to move like the younger players and keep up with training that could break them in both physically and mentally!

Once A Coach, Always A Coach!

That doesn’t mean that Pakistan needs a coach who is young and fit like the players. What the team needs is a taskmaster who can make the players fitter, stronger and at par with its competitors. Someone like the late Bob Woolmer since most of the current players credit him as the best thing to happen to them.

Sadly, he passed away during the World Cup in 2007, and the next big thing after him on the coaching circuit was Dav Whatmore, former Australian cricketer and Sri Lanka’s World Cup winning coach.

After Woolmer’s demise, Pakistan team was served by former Australian fast bowler, Geoff Lawson, but his contract was not renewed after expiry and since then it has been a case of passing the pillow.

Luckily, Dav Whatmore is in Pakistan to ‘hopefully’ finalize his deal with the Pakistan Cricket Board and in the coming few weeks, he might be ‘unveiled’ as the head coach of the Pakistan cricket team.

The Man Pakistan Cricket Needs!

So why is Dav Whatmore so important for Pakistan cricket? For beginners, even before his appointment, Whatmore had become the driving force behind Pakistan’s recent success. The players have played the best cricket of their careers against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh recently to make the newly-appointed Chairman Zaka Ashraf believe that they don’t want Mohsin Khan to go.

Mohsin has emerged as a coach who understands the players who want him rather than submit to the might of Whatmore who understands the game. It was Whatmore who made Sri Lankan players use the first 15 overs for pinch hitting; it was his idea to use spinners as attacking bowlers and it was his brilliant handling that brought the best out of the burly cricketers like Arjuna Ranatunga and Aravinda de Silva.

Despite the players’ silent protest, PCB is on course to nominate Whatmore as Pakistan’s saviour soon. One hopes that his presence as an observer helps the players do well against England because for the series against the world’s best Test side would be tough.

Misbah ul Haq and his team may have defeated Sri Lanka and Bangladesh under Mohsin Khan’s tutelage, but they would have been able to do that without the coach as well. Against England, it will be a different ball game altogether. One hopes they continue their new-found winning-streak because if they falter, they will need more than ‘catching practice’ to save the day.

Sound clichéd in this day and age when most people have forgotten that cricket was a gentlemen’s sport and was synonymous with fair play and sporting spirit? Well all those who think that way can be forgiven simply because cricket the game, the philosophy, the way of life is no more. It is probably found in the hearts and minds of oldies like me who fell in love with this game when it really signified all that was good and fair.

Mazhar Majeed

That is no more the case, sadly, and we have no one to blame for this state but ourselves. We let the rot set in by being ‘forgiving’ of misdemeanors, by protecting, pardoning and them promoting the culprits guilty of corruption  and those tarnishing the good name of the game.

Once that was done, there was nothing to stop us from sliding down the very slippery slope, leading to the abyss where messers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir now find themselves. They, and their agent Mazhar Majeed have been found guilty of corruption and cheating in the game through spot, or fancy (fancy that!) fixing of the games played in England last summer, and in a few hours, will learn of the punishment to be meted out for their crimes.

This is not all, there is talk about the possible involvement of two other players, who may be brought within the circle of investigation. What a sorry state of affairs. And to think it surfaced through a well planned sting operation by a reporter of the now deceased News of the World newspaper, which had to pack up because of such sting operations carried out through phone hackings.

So are only these players guilty? They let their greed soil the name of the country they were supposed to represent as its ambassadors? The answer to that is an emphatic NO! The management of the game in the country, the PCB, as well as the governing body of the game, the ICC  and its totally inept ACU, the Anti Corruption Unit, is equally to blame for not having nipped the evil in the bud.

While there should be zero tolerance for corrupt behavior, there is an equally great need to question the role of these bodies and there working, which is just not cricket!

Source of images  1, 2

Name: Moin Khan

Occupation: Cricketer

Born On: 23 – September

Websites: None

Detailed Profile: Moin Khan

Wiki Page: Moin Khan

Moin Khan is a former Pakistan captain and an integral part of the 1992 World Cup winning team.

He reaped rich success for his innovating batting and played numerous match-winning knocks for Pakistan, especially in limited-overs cricket. He has taken over 100 catches in Test cricket. He has scored over 3,000 ODI runs and taken over 200 catches in ODI cricket.

 Name: Aamir Sohail

Occupation: Cricketer

Born On: 14- September

Websites: None

Detailed Profile: Aamir Sohail

Wiki Page: Aamir Sohail

A combative left-hand opener, Aamir Sohail was a predominantly back-foot player whose forte was improvisation. He loved to attack, and almost found it impossible to control his aggression. He showed no fear, epitomised by his baiting of Venkatesh Prasad in a 1996 World Cup quarter-final in front of a hostile Bangalore crowd. He was an effective left-arm spinner, more a one-day bowler than a Test wicket-taker. Aamir played a big part in Pakistan's World Cup triumph in 1992, and famously told Ian Botham that he might want to send his mother-in-law in to bat after Botham was controversially given out for 0 in the final. He captained Pakistan at the height of the match-fixing controversy, and was one of the whistle-blowers. His career suffered as a result, and he left the international scene early to work in broadcasting, where he might have tried harder to suppress his personal prejudices.

He is currently the director media, PCB.