There has been an eclectic support cast, including Matthew Hayden as a mentor, Adam Hollioake as batting coach, two different high-performance coaches on two successive away tours, Mohammad Yousuf as a batting coach now transitioned into a selector, and seven different bowling coaches. For a time, the manager was an empowered cricket strategist and not simply the guy who holds the passports, books the flights and makes sure shirts are tucked in at breakfast, as pretty much all previous managers were.
Is it any surprise, given this churn, that players new and established look so frazzled? Who does Abdullah Shafique turn to, to claw out of the rut he has been in? Who tells Babar Azam what is going wrong and how to make it right? If the development of Pakistani bowlers is arrested across all formats, is it any surprise?
Five
Different chief selectors. This stellar list includes Shahid Afridi (as with all the best Afridi interventions, it was short-lived), Haroon Rasheed (the new Intikhab Alam, finding a way back into any and every administration with such frequency that he’s never actually been out) and Wahab Riaz . It is as many head selectors as Sri Lanka, Australia, England and South Africa put together have had over the same period. Australia have had five different chief selectors since 1996-97. What’s more, as part of various committees (and including the chiefs) 23 different men have selected Pakistan teams since August 2021.
They have tried traditional selection committees, with one head and two or three members. They had one with a chief and consultants, one of whom, for one day only, was Salman Butt (it’s okay, the other one was Kamran Akmal). One chief had to step down because of an alleged conflict of interest after it emerged that he was in business with the agent of Pakistan’s biggest players (except, 11 months on, nobody has been told what’s happening with that inquiry). Some committees have had coach and captain in it. Some have had seven members, each with a vote, but no chief. The current one has nine members, of whom four can cast a vote, with no chief.
Is it surprising, then, that since August 2021 no side has used more players across all formats? India have used the same number – 66 – but have played 55 more games in doing so. In a time of three formats and multiple schedule challenges, it is natural there will be a need to use more players, to both build and use depth in the player pool. But with Pakistan it does feel very much a direct consequence of 23 different men having 23 different ideas about which players to select.
Three
Full-time captains. Other than stand-ins, Babar, Shaheen Afridi and Shan Masood have been the only full-time Pakistan captains in this period. Given the backdrop above, their own brutal history with captains (in 2010 alone, Pakistan used four), and that Australia (4), England (4), Sri Lanka (6) and Bangladesh (5) have all used more men across all formats in this period, this should be remarkable.
Meanwhile, Babar returned, no doubt warier and singed by the experience. He also did with the knowledge that no matter how reactive or inert a captain he was, he had led Pakistan to that 2-0 win in Sri Lanka on his last assignment, playing the New Pakistan Way. And that now, a man averaging less than 30 with the bat after a decade of Test cricket had replaced him as captain.
Somehow, one after the other, two administrations managed to unsettle two of the side’s most valuable players and, to no surprise, here both are, struggling with their games and here is Pakistan, with two official captains, looking leaderless on the field.
Off it they are looking worse.
