The buck stops at your desk, Mr Chairman
Only Time, the great healer and four days safe distance from the second of April permits the casting of a cold analytic eye on the nightmarish events in the first semifinal of the ICC World Cup Twenty20, 2014 in Bangladesh. It is history now, albeit still painfully fresh history, but still, being in the past, it is drained of real time fear. Then, it was hardly bearable to watch, and some sensitive natures did turn away from the action which was unfolding on the field, with only one side, the laughing Calypsos, playing cricket and the greenshirts just going through the motions once the onslaught began. The fans have now gotten used to such tame and inexplicable surrenders, in which our super stars handle the ball and bat as if they were newly suckling babes instead of the experienced veterans that they are supposed to be. Still, the repeated shameless capitulation, and that too in a high profile global event, rankles and further demoralises a people starved of any good news. Whosoever be the manager or coach at any given time, whatever the composition of the selection committee and sundry staff, while the greenshirts may surprise at times with a truly sparkling performance, it is only a matter of time before they succumb to the old ways.
The irony is that in this particular event greenshirts had so far been the most consistent outfit in the world, making it to the two finals, gloriously winning the title in 2009 and subsequently two semifinal finishes. The dissection of Pakistan’s performance – starting with a defeat much to India’s glee and finishing with annihilation, with a lucky escape against the Aussies in-between – reflects mental capitulation on top of not having the right resources, the combinations that are so very vital to prevail in any format.
Hindsight, it is said, is Twenty20. But informed critics had pointed out the moment the team was named: the selection was lopsided. That absence of Sharjeel Khan and Mohammad Talha might hurt, they opined. The former provided power and panache in batting and the latter raw pace in bowling. Both were in-form players. Yet preferred over them were Kamran Akmal and Shoaib Malik. From the recent Asia Cup performances, it was obvious that Umar Gul was not hundred per cent fit and Saeed Ajmal had been sorted out.
In his tweets, PCB Chairman Najam Sethi has mentioned ‘accountability’. That’s good, but he must be aware: the buck stops at his desk. Mohammad Hafeez has stepped down, as he should have, but going back to Shahid Afridi is not going to be a panacea even in the short term. Those he had anointed as coaches and consultants – Moin Khan, Zaheer Abbas and Mohammad Akram – did not turn out to be worth their salt, neither in strategy and planning, nor in stirring up that fire in the belly of their charges. So, it is only appropriate, the man who appointed them should answer the call of accountability. More importantly for the future, the PCB Chairman must arrange to put in the systems on the basis of which other frontline cricketing nations thrive, instead of the ad hoc manner of a caretaker by acting on the spurious advice of a coterie.
