Cricketfiles.com

AUSTRALIA’S cricket tour of Pakistan was thrown into further chaos last night after elections in the troubled country were postponed until the end of February.Australia are slated to leave for Pakistan in mid-March to play three Tests, five one-day internationals and a Twenty20 game, but that now seems out of the question.

Cricket Australia, the players union and security staff were due to complete their pre-tour inspection of safety and security measures in the first week of February. But it seems that Cricket Australia has already made their decision as in the past they have refused to play in Pakistan in less volatile conditions, they are just trying to avoid the heavy penalties imposed by ICC in the event they fail to tour.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade last night continued to warn Australian travelers that “the security situation in Pakistan is very precarious and could deteriorate further”.

“We continue to receive a stream of credible reports indicating terrorists are in the advanced stages of planning attacks,” the report said.

Its true the conditions are Bad in Pakistan right now but they are quickly coming back to normal, and there has never been any threat to any player whatsoever, recently South Africa toured Pakistan, Australia A team toured Pakistan pretty much under the same conditions, the players were provided unprecedented security and all the games carried on smoothly.

The crisis continues …………………… Malik’s appointment as the team’s captain has created a lot of controversies in the camp and now his injury is leading to more crisis. The question is why should anyone take a temporary assignment? Especially when the credit goes to someone else. When we talk like patriots and philosophers we all say that we must play for the country and not for ourself. That is restricted to most drawing room, dressing room and board room discussions, the reality is everyone plays for his own self and no-one ever admits that he plays for himself. When the famous legendary Imran Khan, after winning the world cup in 1992 said, “I won the Cup” there was a storm in the tea cup.

If Malik is not going to play due to his fitness, all eyes would be on Younus Khan once again and he would be the dummy target or the sitting duck to shoot at. I am not one of those people who would support Younus Khan leading the side, it was once again Imran Khan the great and the media who hyped up this issue. In my opinion, during 2004-2005 when Pakistan was touring Australia, Inzi was injured and Mohammad Younus took the mantle, he should have been retained since then and groomed till Inzi’s retirement. But, there were other rumours at that time.

After the WC 07 both India and Pakistan cricket boards vowed to rebuild their teams, its been almost a year since the WC-07 and it seems that the Indian’s have accepted and adopted change without any resistance and they have integrated exciting young players around their core players and have regained their place among the top three teams in the world.

Pakistan after one year are still clueless regarding their combination for ODis and tests, since the T/20 WC their performance has been miserable, they have lost a home series against SA and in 24 years for the first time they lost an ODI series in India.

They have appointed a young captain who does not command respect from his senior team mates and the Pakistan Cricket think tank has been voicing its concern that the Malik does not deserve a place in the team on merit. The young players Pakistan tried in the past were not selected on Merit and it seems that a game of musical chair is being played with a certain group of below average players whenever a vacuum is created in the team with regards to a certain position one of these players is picked up to fill the vacuum, time and again the PCB management has shown its resistance in bringing about a radical change in the selection process where young raw talent is inducted in the team and groomed.

Malik at times is helpless and clueless on the field and has so far been unable to extract match winning performances from the senior players, the core senior players are disgruntled over the PCB policy to ignore them for the Captaincy and as a result they have gone rogue. If we look at the performance of Younus and Afridi in T/20 tournament in every key match they failed and even in the SA series although Younis scored runs but at an agonizingly slow rate highly un characteristic of him, Afridi threw away his wicket in the fifth match of the ODi series which Pakistan could have easily won along with the series if he had stayed on the wicket for one more over, Yousuf joined ICL for not being selected for T/20 and was later on given Rs 5 crore to persuade him to scrap that contract, Shoaib Akhter he does not need any reason he was born rogue. After every series PCB never know about his whereabouts he cannot bowl more than 4 overs and this drama has been going on since the last two years.

On top of that PCB has hired a foreign coach who himself was an average player and has nothing to offer to our players at times we have seen that the team has no plan no preparation and no strategy in key encounters. The whole mismanagement has resulted in producing a weak captain, rogue players, dummy coach and a corrupt board who has millions in its coffers and is spending nothing to promote domestic cricket.