Column

Pakistan’s cricket is in a mess, says Imran Khan which, all things considered, seems an understatement of sorts. Why, even Dawood Ibrahim, otherwise believed to have omniscient influence, couldn’t help his daughter’s father-in-law — a bloke called Javed Miandad — salvage his recently-acquired position of Director General in the Pakistan Cricket Board.

But honestly, the current miserable state of Pakistan cricket precludes any attempt at humour, bleak or black. Almost everything that one can imagine has gone wrong over the past 18 months. For instance, no country had toured Pakistan for more than a year till the recently, hastily-arranged one-day series against Sri Lanka. And more trouble: this year’s calendar looks equally barren.

In the interim, players have migrated to the ICL — many out of choice, a few out of frustration — several other players have been chosen or dropped whimsically, one key fast bowler finds himself in an embarrassing drug scandal, another in no captain’s wish list, coach Geoff Lawson has lost his job, and just this week, so has captain Shoaib Malik. In the face of such unending turmoil, the PCB is faced with bankruptcy, both cricketing and financial.

A great deal of Pakistan cricket’s current woes could be attributed to bad luck, and circumstances beyond the cricket board’s control. Yet, it must also be said that the administration has played no insignificant role in the downfall, despite many major domos in the establishment being from the armed forces. Whether that is, in fact, the problem is a moot point.

None of the great former players, for instance, have expressed any great confidence in the way the PCB functions. Constant and diabolical power struggles have left the establishment beleaguered and weak, because these battles also resonate in team selection and development programmes. Admittedly, the PCB has tried to get former cricketers involved in most aspects, but the tenures of most such players has been too brief to have any visible beneficial effect.

This is best reflected by the cavalier manner in which its three greatest cricketers — Imran, Miandad and Wasim Akram — have been reduced to haplessness. Only Miandad has periodically expressed any desire to become a direct participant in the affairs of the PCB, but even he — streetsmart and all that — has failed to last the distance.

Akram spends more time all over the world, except in Pakistan, advising young cricketers every now and then how to bowl, or not-so-young cricketers on how to dance for reality TV. His expertise for Pakistan remains untapped. Imran, meanwhile, prefers to remain aloof from the system.

Of the three, I believe Imran is the man who can effect a turnaround because he has the cricketing credentials, the public stature and a reformist’s zeal, which was so evident in his playing days. Alas, he has chosen politics, where he is still just somebody, over cricket where he is not just anybody, but a titan.

Oh, the ironies of life.