‘It’s a structural problem’
Cricket revival will need to be a long, deep process
Javed Miandad is happy about the recent Test wins against Australia and New Zealand, but he doesn’t believe, like some, in the ‘turn-around’ being talked about. True, the wins and the records were nothing short of remarkable, and as one of the best natural players ever to grace the game, he understands the significance of all feats achieved. But these wins will not address chronic problems in the “structure” of the team and the board.
“At the end of the day, it is what happens on the ground that matters, which means eventually it is what players do that matters,” he said.
That means the entire setup of the board, the lower-level cricket structure, the spotting, nurturing and preservation of players, and especially the selection process all play a role in what finally happens in the field.
It’s like a factory, he said. “It’s not enough to just make a building, you have to get the right people at the right places otherwise the exercise will have no meaning”.
Over the long years of his association with Pakistani cricket, he feels our biggest problem is “not learning from our own mistakes”.
For years veterans like himself and Imran have advocated revamping the entire domestic structure. But every time the board has realised that there are problems practically at every level – school, club and first-class – it has just abandoned the initiative. With ground facilities abysmal in cities like Karachi and Lahore, cricket growth is being stunted right at the beginning.
“Boys do not get the exposure they need to develop as natural athletes”, he added. “Our players still grow up playing mostly on streets. They learn to dive when they start first-class cricket. It is little surprise that many do not develop the qualities required at the top level”.
For years veterans like himself and Imran have advocated revamping the entire domestic structure. But every time the board has realised that there are problems practically at every level – school, club and first-class – it has just abandoned the initiative
And the board, of course, is still in no mood of waking up. Its issues continue to be primarily political, like whether or not the prime minister’s favoured candidate can keep the chairmanship. Even now, with questions being raised about the team’s ability in the one-day format, especially ahead of next year’s world cup, the board’s most important issue is placing Najam Sethi at the top when we head the ICC. Javed, of course, is only too familiar with what happens when politics dominate the PCB. Appointments, invariably, are also determined more by alliances than ability.
“The rest of the cricketing world does not function like us anymore”, he said with regret. “Our players will keep playing for years despite just the occasional average performance”.
That, he added, is unfair not only because deserving players are deprived of their chance, but also because handsome fees are paid to international players, and they should not be allowed to pocket them without deserving. Yet with politics determining the direction of the board, such practices are difficult to root out.
Talking to him, you get the feeling that he believes players nowadays, too, are more of a letdown than before. “We never had such elaborate coaching processes, yet we produced players like Zaheer, Asif, Majid, Mushtaq, etc”, he pointed out. “You cannot teach players at this level how to play, that is something they must work on themselves”.
He spoke of his first baby-steps in the cricket world, way back in ’74 when Kardar sb pushed him to play a domestic match in Lahore. “I went to Gaddafi, scored a century in the first innings, and a double century in the second”, he said proudly. “We had to work our way up to the national team, now you hear players saying the need to play Tests so they can come back to form, which is ridiculous”. That early start led to a string of impressive performances, and earned him a place in the ’74 world cup squad, when he and Imran made the team’s youngsters.
Unlike most commentators, he is still worried about the team’s chances in the world cup. “It’s not possible to predict one-day matches”. The team was able to turn things around in ’92, after all, when he was vice captain of the world cup wining side under Imran. “But the way things are going, it will be a difficult task, especially considering Australian conditions”.
And, again, since the board has been paralysed for a long time, and the team must rely solely on its own initiative, the captain and selectors will have to take a few tough decisions. The practice of tagging along old heavyweights who no longer deliver will have to be abandoned. And the team cannot continue to rely on ‘conditions’ to tilt things in its favour.
“The wins against Australia and New Zealand were phenomenal, but the conditions also suited Pakistan overwhelmingly. If Warne were still in the team, these wickets would have favoured his wrist-spin to a large degree. I feel Pakistan’s totals would have been far smaller”.
He spoke of his first baby-steps in the cricket world, way back in ’74 when Kardar sb pushed him to play a domestic match in Lahore. “I went to Gaddafi, scored a century in the first innings, and a double century in the second”, he said proudly
But, even though consideration for the cup must take precedence in the immediate term, the longer process must not be forgotten. Sadly, though, there’s little sign of progress in the right direction. We remain without administrative and structural requirements for a real turnaround, he kept repeating. The board is running like a hospital without doctors, was one of his many examples. And, sadly, legends like himself, with decades of experience and profiles matching some of the best the game has ever produced, are no longer brought in the loop of the board’s capacity building exercise.
For those associated with the game, he said, the team’s decline did not come as a surprise. Yet they struggle to understand why the country’s cricket machinery is unable to adopt a more proactive role in confronting that decline.
“I played in six world cups” he mentioned. Only Tendulkar has equalled this record. “I rubbed shoulders with the best in the world for 24 years. I made numerous recommendations to improve the structure of administration from the bottom to the top, yet nothing was ever done and no recommendation was even considered”.
What about the argument raised by certain circles that insisting cricket administrators should be former players is faulty? The administration’s function, they say, is not to play on the ground or teach players how to play, it is to run the enterprise of which the ground game is one aspect, though the most important one.
“Why do boards across the world resort to former players to fill important positions then?” he shot back. “I have said this a hundred times, and I’ll say it again. We just don’t learn from our mistakes. We have been in the field for years. We know the bottlenecks that retard progress, and have formulated strategies to overcome them. A non-player cannot understand structural problems, and hence cannot formulate proper policies”.
If greats like Miandad have such concerns after all these years, then perhaps these ‘structural problems’ are the core problem, not the least because most senior players have repeated these concerns, and the team has regressed as they have become more prominent. Yet that the board simply refuses to entertain these players’ thoughts speaks volumes about how much things have ‘turned around’, regardless of the magnitude of the recent wins and records.