Whats with pak cricket ?

[scorpio]

Ok this is one is for pak fans.

Why all the corruption, groupism and stupidity in pak teams ?

In the last ten yrs i remember the following either getting dropped or sent home due to varous reasons like indiscipline, ego , groupism, corruption and other reasons.

Javed miandad(As player and coach)
Basit ali (An extremely talented batsman wasted)
Rashid latif
Moin khan
Aaqib Javed
Waqar
Wasim
Aamir sohail
Saqlain
Mustaq Ahmed
and now Youhana

I dont remember all the others..

They are wasting their talent with this squabbling. Waqar and wasim alwys were at loggerheads except for a brief period wasting thier talent. Now Youhana.

Do you guys have any idea why this crap goes on ? It pisses me off when i see real talen go waste..And now they were treated like bangladesh by oz.

I am sure the defeat has lot to do with team morale and infighting as much as aussie batting and bowling..

 

[scorpio]

guess there are no pak fans in this forum...

 

[Kimbo]

I guess not.

 

[R_Powell_fan]

First and foremost of all I support the West Indies , but find pakistani cricket very interesting, as if no one else does ,thanks scorpio for bringing up some names, one of them of course being Moin Khan who has now been thrown into the 'wilderness' away from international cricket, how come such a talented and gifted wicketkeeper batsman as he obviously is , is not even considered for international duty, in my opinion his career began to go bad since he became captain and has went downhill since then, what is you guys' take on this particular topic ??
I have utmost respect for Rashid Latiff but I think Moin Khan could've really gone places as an ODI player and besides I kinda miss hearing his 'shabash, shaabaaash' from beind the stumps...I think he is a better ODI player than Latiff who in his turn is better in tests.
Its a tiny bit like the story between Healy and Gilchrist as Moin is younger than Latiff.

 

[Neil Pickup]

Gotchya and Yorker are the Pakistan fans here.

R_Powell_fan - You're the only WI one as far as I know so you'll be on the receiving end of a bit Like the team, really.

 

[Gotchya]

guess there are no pak fans in this forum...

Not so fast !!!

Well yes abt whats going on in pakistan is nothing new. Players have been sacrificial lambs right from the beginning. The youhanna incident : Nothing surprising (expected of the officials anytime) but it hurt a lot...literally.


There was never any doubt that pakistani cricket has been blessed with administrators with inflated egos ever since. Factions were also a tiresome problem, the first time i think that ever happened was back in the days when A.H Kardar used to be the chairman, the row was over the money that the Pakistani players received compared to other test playing nations, that was the first and it has been an ongoing nuisance ever since.

The question "WHY" does not have a simple answer, i think you will agree, why would players ever put their own interests in front of their country, or why should officials be tempted to go to extremes just to emphasize who is the boss. Frankly i dont know. Either way i think Power is something that doesn't go down the throat very easily.

The latest incident however maybe isolated because another similar incident happened some years ago when Abdul Qadir the leg spinner was sent back from New zealand, then and now Yawar Saeed was the touring manager. Before the tour the PCB had explicitly given the permission to send any offender back.

Now the tragedy here is that Youhanna undoubtedly provides Pakistan with the depth in batting they so desperately need, even if there was something offensive (we still dont know the details) it is imperative to settle issues immediately, common sense demands so, but since we have a law here that says we can send someone back, and because we want to make ourselves look like idiots of making heavy weather out of nothing "Lets send him back".

Now who should have educated the management that such an action is an extreme(which i believe was not the case here), it can rattle confidence from the root. Rather settel the issue there and then MATURELY, we aren't dealing here with a school team, everything we do will ahve a direct impact on the standing of Pakistan :I.
Nope cant have any of that !! thats too sensible !

The only face saving i guess is that back then players didn't get to narrate their version of the incident (they weren't even given the ticket back home in some), but now it is a little different but only a little.

[Edited on 8/31/02 by Gotchya]

 

[Gotchya]

In the last ten yrs i remember the following either getting dropped or sent home due to varous reasons like indiscipline, ego , groupism, corruption and other reasons.

Javed miandad(As player and coach)
Basit ali (An extremely talented batsman wasted)
Rashid latif
Moin khan
Aaqib Javed
Waqar
Wasim
Aamir sohail
Saqlain
Mustaq Ahmed
and now Youhana

The players you mention are a mix of the 'I dont like his guts' and the ones involved in the match fixing Fiasco.

Rashid,Amir,Aqib and Basit

Well to tell you the truth all four were buddies at some time or later in their careers (so they must have more or less the same guts )

Amir and Basit two very talented batsmen, think they ate too many chillies too regulary, they had an aggressive outlook to the arrogance that some of the senior players or officials carried around. Just the stereotype outlaws, you guessed what the reaction was upstairs.
Amir survived(really?) maybe because he had some buddies in the right places He had the strength of character to withstand the storm,to say it 'out loud'.Even got to captain pakistan for the reasons stated above,Basit well he had the latter but nothe former qualtitey and just faded.

Aqib and Rashid the more passive of the four were more inclined to accept their fate, only to be pulled in by amir at a later stage. Rashid seems to have won favours lately, consequently he had made it to the team. Aqib again just capitulated, adding to that quite a few talented youngsters cropped up to replace him.

Mushtaq ans Saqlain

I seriously doubt that Mushtaq was the target of any campaign as such (unless ofcourse someone has a conspiracy theory)
He just didn't perform terribly well on pitches that didn't suit him, moreover a battery of pace attack kept bowling out sides and he just seemed to be an expensive
inclusion. I was never in doubt of his talent,on numerous occasions he was devastating, but he just wasn't good enough anymore.

Saqlain..egoism...groupism...corruption?? tell me if u know. He was rightfully droped form the side because (then) he kept bowling that flat trajectory which is very very annoying and useless against quality batsmen.

Waqar and Wasim

Waqar was i think the model form the start of his career. He deserves credit for his devotion to cricket and heedlessness to petty issues as to who is the BIG WHOOP around. Wasim the pal i think didn't act very fair to him, you will never know, neither will I, what went wrong but my best guess is the 'Power Games', the constant urge to prove superiority which made the two drift apart.

Wasim is a great cricketer, i am not very sure abt the other half. I think that if you become aware of ur own importance you want to make it count. Although this should account for only a minor period of his career, it has got him involved in various rifts and revolts. He has been termed as the major reason for polarisation in a particular era. Now though i believe he has learned well, that the team is what matters most, not petty politics.

Javed Miandad

I like to put it more as 'The street fighter' as i read abt him in a magazine. Undoubtedly the main reason why pakistan rose up from being under acheievers to a major circketing force. So many occasions he lifted the team from an impossible situation and made pakistan believe that they could win too.
He was shrewd and intelligent,his main problem was that he got carried away. He was just like those characters which know too well that they are right and 99 times out of 100 they are. When he was at his peak of his career, many incidents were boiling up such as the packer affair, the karachi player--lahore player issues(really dont think it was one but always gets mentioned)so he just seemed to be in troubled times rather then the contrary. I have t admit though, he loved politics !!
winning little games was his best trait, and i guess he couldn't restrain from doing so off the field either!!


All that said, i think that now the situation is far better then earlier. The officials are far more considerate.Waqar i dont think he will tolerate any sort of polarisation in this team,he has made the players believe that the battles they win in the field are far more enjoyable and rewarding then the ones off the field, and i have complete confdence in the man called Tauqir Zia, he has taken many steps in the right direction (reliable information ) and i hear that youhanna has already won a place in the ICC tournament so Cheers



[Edited on 8/31/02 by Gotchya]

 

[scorpio]

Good post gotchya. I reckon Roy and yorker are pakis too. Let me see what thier take on this subject is.

I agree that Aamir was really arrogant. But he was a good opener and a decent left armer. Pity he never got to play for long.

Basit in my opinion was one of the most talented batsman to play for pak. I think youhana is a better version of him. But i still remember the 75 ball 127 basit made against windies before Lara outshined him

Wht abt Saqlain? U reckon he was dropped on performance?

I agree abt waqar...seems a real nice guy. But for all of his acheivements...i reckon akram is really arrogant and scheming...and i have a suspcion he was really involved in matchfixing. What do u folks think?

javed miandad IMO didnt have the mental maturity to play elder statesman i guess..

Despite all this it is still mindboggling how many players get dropped or sent home every year. Must be frustrating for fans.

 

[Gotchya]

Despite all this it is still mindboggling how many players get dropped or sent home every year. Must be frustrating for fans.

Yup....You said it !

 

[royGilchrist]

First of all please refrain from using the term 'Pakis', I take offense.

Secondly I feel that the Pak cricket is just a microcasm (sp?) of the Pak society in general. Like all other institutions in Pak, cricket is also corrupt, and without any semblance of a system.

A guy like Imran, comes along, strong powerful personlity, thjings improve while he is there, but due to the lack of proper structure and system (I dont mean the domestics cricket structure), there is no permanent improvement. In Aus, for example M Taylor was an awesome captain, but he was not indispensible, no one is. Cricket so well structured that everyone can be replaced.

People cite match-fixing as one of the main causes for Pak cricket's recent problems, but thats not the root. I mean the whole country is involved in corruption of some sort, so why would the cricketers be any different. Once match-fixing investigation was headed by a guy who himself was suppose to be one of the most corrupt guys in Pak, so how can there be any credibility.

To sum it up, the way I see it is that most of the problems with Pak cricket have a common root, the state of society in Pak. Non-Pakistanis would just be shocked if told a few examples, but I dont want to bring that up as I am sure you guys already think that I am going off topic.

On another note, although nepotism is also rampant in Pak society, it has been relatively less common in Cricket.

Also, whoever say that Moin was a better overall player than Rashid Latif, is wrong. First and foremost, Rashid is a significantly better keeper in all forms of the game. Secondly, Moin's batting although more effective in ODi sometimes, is overall weaker than Rashid. And when he was dropped from the team his batting had deteriorated considerably. Captaincy syndrome I think, or should we say Ganguly syndrome...Scorpio

 

[scorpio]

sorry roy..abt the term pakis..i didnt realise i was using it. I apologize.

I perfectly understand ur post being a indian..i can see whats goes on in pak.

But there must be some explanation for the way things happen in cricket. Its just too random...every player seems to go thro this phase atleast once in his career..am i right here ?

I agree latif is more talented...but moin has better spirit and is more flamboyant.

Oh keep ur ganguly comments..to the other thread..lol..i see you are silent there...facts too much for u ?

 

[Gotchya]

I perfectly understand ur post being a indian..i can see whats goes on in pak.

Sure you do(after all we're neighbours)

Non-Pakistanis would just be shocked if told a few examples, but I dont want to bring that up

good for you buddy, this isn't the place

Sadly agree with what you have to say, the 'society' has been crumbling for some time, no surpise therefore that the disease has found way in here and it is impossible to isolate in one dimension only.



[Edited on 9/1/02 by Gotchya]

 

[Neil Pickup]

On another note, although nepotism is also rampant in Pak society, it has been relatively less common in Cricket.

We have something pretty close to that in England too, involving Surrey.. !

 

[scorpio]

Considering the mauling pak team got in the 2 onedays...could this be a sign that another 96 style rebellion is brewing ?

For all the good bowling aussie did..pak almost collapsed for 60 runs. And why didnt Inzamam play ?

and is there any scoop news on the youhanna thing? Gotchya ? yorker ?

 

[chris.hinton]

Shahid Saeed as well

 

[Gotchya]

Shahid Saeed as well

What was that again?

For all the good bowling aussie did..pak almost collapsed for 60 runs. And why didnt Inzamam play ?

Thats a question i would give anything to get an answer for. I am not sure if Inzi is injured. So close to the major tournaments this is no time to sit back and relax. He should be out there roughing it out head to head instead for some inexplicable reasons the two best batsmen of pakistan are spending the summer in the shades !

Considering the mauling pak team got in the 2 onedays...could this be a sign that another 96 style rebellion is brewing ?

Although highly doubtful, i am beggining to be suspicious, if there really is something going on. In my opinion if (a big if) it is then it is a very silent one and the most unexpected.

Wether this really is a sign of a rebellion,
In the past rows got started if

1-Pakistan were performing badly.

Pakistan were not performing badly at all before Morocco.Beat Australia as well as lifted the Sharjah cup, and very convincing.


2- The captain went to great pains to show who the boss was (over excercising authority) Or the players just didn't agree with him Or the captain failed to gain the respect of other players in the team.

Waqar, by no stretch of imagination (i know the man) is like those people who want to get their noses ahead, or would ever need to raise his voice to get heard. If some of the players don't agree with him, i would expect him to sort it out himself. Until now i thought that Waqar had the respect of all the players, maybe i am being proven wrong now. Which would probably lead them to commit stupidity # 4 on the list.


3- Stubborn behaviour of the higher ups in the PCB

Simply not the case. The PCB has been very cooperative, flexible and generous(Tauqir Zia is not my buddy). Its not the money either.

4- Scheming individuals who wanted to disgrace team mates in the limelight, whom they might have had a grudge against(any number of reasons).

Problem Number one over the years

I already mentioned a psychological problem marking some players i have seen, which is the "I dont like his guts" syndrome, it is highly incurable and very treatable. Simply, the prescense of individuals in the team who just couldn't learn to breath the same air, has led to careers being devastated and others being falsely made.
This is specially irritating when the team is let down, when they most need to fair good. Winning a few in Morocco would
certainly have seen Pakistan as a very confident team.....not to be. ! ! !

is there any scoop news on the youhanna thing? Gotchya ? yorker ?

A *#@!$% misunderstanding thats all they say it was, i tried digging but to no avail !

 

[scorpio]

Yeah..there has been a deafening silence abt the youhana thing. But after following cricket for so many yrs...i am sure there is something brewing again.

Whether it is just storm in the tea cup ...or it is a full blown rebellion remains to be seen.

One thing i dont want to see is waqar getting the boot as captain...as it happens alwys in pak cricket.
They are one of the teams which i guess can stop aus..but on current form and morale they might struggle to win the womens worldcup..

 

[scorpio]

Btw...mishbah (damn i forgot his full name) is he a good find ?

If so i hope he doest get wasted a la Imran nazir..

 

[onemangang]

Read this!


Unhappy Tauqir asks Pak

team to sort out mess quickly


KARACHI: The Pakistan team's sudden and mysterious loss of form and dismal performances in Tangier and Nairobi have set tongues wagging and, as usual, has created panic in ranks of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). On Thursday rumors were rife that the PCB Chairman Lt General Tauqir Zia had called up the team management and players individually in Nairobi after Wednesday's pathetic loss to Australia and made it clear he was unhappy at what was happening.

According to well placed sources, Tauqir told the team management of Captain Waqar Younis, coach Mudassar Nazar and manager Yawar Saeed that the Board would be forced to review their positions if the team didn't lift its performances quickly. This warning, apparently, came in light of the recent policy of the Board to only appoint the team captain and coach on a short term, assignment to assignment basis, instead of confirming them for long periods.

The sources say Tauqir also conveyed to the manager that he had plans to visit Colombo before the start of the Champions Trophy and have a face-to-face meeting with all the players to get to the bottom of the problems which had led to the sudden slide in form.

But whether Tauqir would carry out his threat of visiting Colombo could not be confirmed from sources close to him. They, however, confirmed that Tauqir had to talk directly to the players in Nairobi on an individual basis after he got wind of information that everything was not okay in the team with majority not happy with the management.

This was only confirmed with the Yousuf Youhana incident when he was sent back from Nairobi on disciplinary grounds over a issue which on face value did not appear to be a serious breach of discipline at all. Sources say that after Youhana returned to Lahore, Tauqir spoke in detail to some of the senior players and asked them what was going wrong in the team and is said to have been briefed in detail about their grievances.

Grievances are definitely there which need to be addressed between the captain and players and, not surprisingly, one of the many contentious issues is the ability of coach Mudassar Nazar to make sensible and practical cricketing decisions and his handling of some of the younger players.

If one required any proof of a lack of harmony and confidence in the team at the moment, this has come in the shape of some of the decisions taken on the field in Morocco and Nairobi and also the behaviour and body language of the players. There is no denying that some of the players are simply out of form (for example Imran Nazir, Azhar Mehmood, Abdul Razzak) and need time to regroup and this happens to every player in cricket.

But it is also a fact that the management has only compounded its problems by not showing consistency in its decision making. If they have showed any consistency it has been in making one illogical decision after another. On Wednesday once again the management made a hash of things by sending Shahid Afridi at number eight and promoting Shoaib Malik to number three. One has just failed to understand this misplaced faith in the youngster's batting ability on the basis of his two One-day International hundreds.

The fact that Afridi went as low as number eight in the order is a clear indication that something is wrong somewhere in the communication between the players and the management. Anyway the problems are there and have to be resolved. The good thing is that the problems (one would not like to discuss them in detail here) are not such major ones that the PCB should start pushing the panic button.

All this talk about the captain, coach or manager being changed or players being axed will get us nowhere in the long term planning, specially with so many important assignments lined up in the next six months including the impending Test series against Australia and the World Cup. The bottom line is that with Wasim Akram having been ruled out to captain the team as per recommendations of the Justice Malik Qayyum inquiry, there is no better person than Waqar Younis to lead the side ably.

There has been talk about recalling Moin Khan as captain but this becomes very hard to accept given Rashid Latif's consistent performances since his comeback last year in May and the circumstances in which Moin was sacked as captain last year. Waqar to his credit till Morocco had done a remarkable job with the team but since then things have gone terribly wrong for him, although his own form has been satisfactory.

One cannot really blame him for the indiscretion of other players, but what is true is that till Morocco he was successful in motivating and creating a combination of the highly violatile bunch of players. This he has been unable to do in Morocco and Nairobi and the difference is clearly showing on the field and in the performances.

A good captain's ability is judged by what he can get out of his players and Waqar has to understand that again. While he can do nothing about out of form players, he can still do a lot to set things right and stop becoming a pawn in other peoples hands who have their own agendas lined up.

The one positive aspect in this bleak scenario is that given the unpredictable nature of our players and their immense talent and ability to get quickly back on their feet, all that is required is for a sensible and open discussion between Waqar, Mudassar and the players to clear the air and get things back on track.

 

[scorpio]

ONE_MAN...where did u get that article ?

It sort of confirms my hunch. I was telling my roomie that it has been quite sometime since i saw some rebellion in pak cricket heh.

If waqar gets thrown out there can be no worser disgrace...he has done a good job.

Yeah afridi batting at 8 is a real waste of his abilities. But i reckon there is somehting worse brewing..especially with the world cup around thecorner.

How do u rate the chances of Inzy coming to captaincy and do u guys think akram is playing any politics (I think he is capable of)