By Jason Cave
March 12th 2010 @ 4:00am
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Pakistan cricket in crisis yet again
When the Pakistan team arrived for their tour of Australia, there was some who thought that they would push Australia throughout the Tests this summer.
However, from day one of the 1st Test in Melbourne, things went downhill, and stayed that way throughout the tour.
Pakistan lost the Test series 3-0, the second with victory in sight only to be ruined by bad catching and some bizarre field placings on the final day.
Even more so was the catching poor on the New Zealand leg of their tour, where Pakistan dropped an extraordinary six catches during one of the matches.
Then Pakistan lost the two Twenty20 games, and the Commonwealth Bank one-day series 5-0, to cap off one of the worst tours in Pakistan’s long history.
But no-one could have predicted the savage backlash that greeted the team on their return to Pakistan.
The Pakistan Cricket Board appointed a board of inquiry into the dismal performance of the Pakistan team on their tour of Australia/NZ, and the results of their findings were:
- Mohammad Yousuf and Younus Khan were banned. Yousuf was also stripped of the captaincy.
- Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved ul-Hasan suspended for one year.
- The Akmal brothers (who were involved in a major disagreement with Pakistan team management over team selections – at one stage threatening to return to Pakistan on the first flight after the Sydney debacle) and Shadid Afridi were put on probation for six months and were also fined by the PCB.
With overseas teams refusing to tour Pakistan because of security concerns and the Pakistan team imploding both on and off the field, the International Cricket Council must be concerned about the state of cricket in Pakistan.
Pakistan is in big trouble again.
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Brett McKay said | March 12th 2010 @ 2:29pm | Report comment
There’s a bit of confusion about this latest PCB review. Depending on what paper or website you’ve read, Younus Khan and Mohammad Yousuf were banned from representing Pakistan in any for of the game for 12 months, or for life. There’s a little bit of difference there…
Also, while the findings against Shahid Afridi and the Akmals were pretty clear, it wasn’t really outlined why Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved ul-Hasan particulalry have been suspended for one year.
Mere details??
Jason Cave said | March 12th 2010 @ 2:45pm | Report comment
Probably the least-preferred job in world cricket is the Pakistan captaincy (with the England captaincy not far behind, because of Fleet St). When one gets the nod to be Pakistan captain, he thinks he can do a good job, but behind the scenes his teammates would lobby the influential members of the PCB and also plot the captain’s downfall, to put someone else in charge instead. And then, there’s the selection issues. The Akmal brothers wanted to abandon the tour, after Karman Akmal was dropped after his poor performance with the gloves in Sydney.
This is the reason why the Pakistan Cricket Board needs a strong leader like Imran Khan, who would tell the board in no uncertain terms what he thinks of the board and the team’s performance to date. International cricket needs a strong Pakistan.
Brett McKay said | March 12th 2010 @ 2:53pm | Report comment
Jason, do you know what Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved ul-Hasan have supposedly done??
ratee said | March 12th 2010 @ 3:12pm | Report comment
PCB has saved its skin temporarily by diverting their attention from its shortcomings and big mistakes they made by thousands of goof ups of which most of people are familiar.
My question is when they will be accountable and to whom that is the unknown? May I ask what will happen after the kids they send to the 20/20 world cup get massacred by Bangladesh or Ireland type teams. Well that may mean the end of the PCB and Pakistan cricket for good??? Then an example must be made of the these corrupt administrators…We will be really happy then!!!
Jason Cave said | March 12th 2010 @ 3:24pm | Report comment
According to the PCB, the players were punished not under the code of conduct, but more of “under the inherent powers” of the PCB. This is what Ijaz Butt (head of the PCB) had to say about the punishments:
On Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan-
“When one was captain he threw the other out, when the other was captain, he threw the other man out in spite of the fact that they would be selected….things of that sort…they would not be considered for the World Twenty20.”
On Rana Naved ul-Hasan-
“He (Rana) should have asked the committee, he had long sessions with the committee. The PCB told him what went wrong…It was something that was taken up confidentially….there are definetely postive charges.”
The PCB however stated that the players who were fined/suspended can appeal against the punishments handed out to them.