The victory at Wellington came after 12 test matches. That seems like eternity. Why it took so long? Why we couldn’t win consistently? The last three years have been very frustrating and confusing for Pakistan cricket fans, many reasons have been given for inconsistency of the team i.e the quality of leadership, selection problems, lack of mental toughness, lack of proper technique, poor selection, gross mismanagement by PCB, match fixing and under performance .
Lack of leadership has been attributed as the biggest cause of Pakistan teams inconsistency.
So much has been said about this subject that nothing made any sense anymore. After every defeat or unfavorable result the captain, team management, and the PCB hierarchy came under scathing attack from different sections in the media, since 2007 two captains lost their job, several selection committees were formed and disbanded, the team management also under went through frequent changes the higher board officials had to appear before senate committee for sports to give reasons for the losses.
The batting line up especially the top order kept on changing on popular demand.
Now some of the criticism was valid and at times made sense but most of it was just based on superficial assumptions and had nothing to do with on field realities. Malik was accused of being a dummy captain, a meek leader with a lazy demeanor on the field he was also accused of not deserving a place in the team and not commanding the respect of the seniors, and above all he was supporting players from Sialkot region.
Malik lost the job despite having a good record as a captain, he lost the test series against India and South Africa because Pakistan never had the bowling to win against these two test heavy weights, Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Sami were way past their prime, and most of the bench strength was lost to ICL.
Younis Khan was appointed captain as Malik’s replacement, he had all the superficial personality traits which critics desired in a Pak captain, energetic, talkative, experienced, senior enough to command respect, had a strong personality to stand up against the management and selectors and because of his stature as a senior batsman deserved an automatic selection in the team.
But unfortunately despite having all those traits Younis Khan’s record as a captain was far worse than Malik, he probably read too much into those critical analyses written by different pundits and tried to become somebody which he was not, YK always had a demeanor of a happy go lucky person, but after taking over captaincy he tried to become a dictator always wanting more powers was very harsh with players as a result he lost the command of the team due to a player’s revolt.
Things could still have worked under Younis if he had not forgotten the most important aspect of being a leader, that a leader has to lead by example, YK paid little attention to his personal form and fitness and as a result could not keep his place in the team, if he had maintained his form he could have won a couple of series which Pakistan lost due to poor batting.
When Mohammad Yousaf was appointed captain of Pakistan team all hell broke lose everybody tried to take a dig at him, doubts were raised about his communication skills, like Malik he was also branded as a meek personality with a lazy demeanor.
We live in a modern world where religious tolerance is propagated but people who boost secularism couldn’t tolerate his beard and made fun of it all the time. But all those superficial assumptions about Yousaf’s personality had little effect on his leadership on the field, he led from the front and made his decisions like any good captain would have made, the only weak point was his fielding but he tried hard.
The bottom line is that a captain is only as good as his team, Mohammad Yousaf benefitted from the return of Asif, he led the team from the front and after losing the first match by a narrow margin came back and leveled the series.
Pakistan usually wins because of their bowling, the return of Asif has made our bowling once again strong enough to win us matches, the slight boost in the bowling has been cancelled by a major dip in form of all the leading batsman as a result we Pakistan team will continue to struggle against top test teams like India, South Africa and Australia. A part of the problem stems from the fact that we have played only 12 tests in last three years the team especially the batsmen lack exposure and experience in this format the more cricket we will play the better we will get.
Pakistan teams performance under Younis and Yousaf has clearly established that a captain’s personality and those much desired superficial traits have little bearing on the on field results all a captain has to do is to lead from the front, take care of the business on field and perform as a player the rest is all psychological bullshit.
Nothing succeeds like success, I think we need to tell all those psychological bullshitters to fuck off and just focus on building a good combination. From my perspective the captaincy debate has finished.
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