Stani Army

I was wondering what to make of Mohammed Yousuf’s decision to turn down the recent request by Shahid Afridi to come out of retirement. Was he being dignified and standing up for what is right or was he just sulking and being stubborn? Of the players that were recently punished, Yousuf was the only one not to file his appeal against his ban. With many fans rightly requesting the PCB administration to go along with the punished players, it seems Yousuf felt his appeal would have been futile.

In my opinion, I think Yousuf is showing that he has truly been hurt and feels he has been wronged by what I felt was a harsh punishment given out to him after the disastrous tour of Australia where he had to step in as captain because there was no other option. The other punished players, in which I will not include Younis Khan, have filed their appeals and look to jump at the chance to get back into the international side and begin where they left off, at their trouble-making best.

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With Shahid Afridi announcing his return to the Test scene, is he nailed on to become captain in all three formats? If the recent Twenty20 World Cup was anything to go by, he certainly still has a lot to learn as captain, but this was probably to be expected.

The good thing is that Test game is much slower paced than Twenty20 and will give Afridi time to think over any decisions and confer with other players. He would also be able to get the input of the coaching staff during drinks breaks, at the end of sessions and at the close of play.

Apart from Afridi, who else is there as possible Test captain? The only other likely candidate, Younis Khan, is still serving his indefinite ban and is waiting on his appeal to be heard. This hearing will definitely not come in time for for him to be considered for the ODI captaincy as his appeal has been adjourned until the 29th of this month with the Asia Cup captain to be named on the 25th. Chances are that the Asia cup captain will probably be Afridi, and this, along with Younis’ ban and Afridi’s desire to return to the Test side, may have made the decision to keep him as Test captain merely a formality. With Afridi’s request in the media of a quick resolution to the damaging allegations surrounding the Pakistan team, he is beginning to sound the part of captain at least.

As a player, I think his return to the Test scene will give us a much more potent and balanced side. The argument is that his batting is not up to Test standard

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Pakistan’s Twenty20 World Cup semi-final loss took Australia’s domination over Pakistan to 12 wins in a row in all formats. Whilst a lot of credit must be given to the Australians for their performance in the semi-final, I disagree with Pakistan Coach Waqar Younis who said “I don’t think we went wrong anywhere. We did a good job, but you’ve just got to give credit to the Australians….I thought we bowled pretty well”. I know that it is our batsmen that usually lose us games and not our bowlers, so we cannot be too critical of them. But some of the bowling in defending 191 in the semi-final was brainless. Even up until the last four overs, just two reasonable overs from four would have made it almost impossible for Australia to come back from and win the game. Yet both Aamer and Ajmal were guilty of bowling the wrong line and far too short. Saeed Ajmal was trusted for the last over as he had done a very good job when Pakistan were in a similar situation in the game against South Africa. Ajmal thought he’d proceed in doing the same thing whilst failing to realise he was bowling to Michael Hussey. Short, and to middle and leg, Hussey just picked him off for sixes. Ajmal should have realised after his first delivery to Hussey that the way to go was full and wide to the off side, but that would have meant thinking for himself.

In general, Pakistan did not deserve to retain the World Cup even if they had squeezed into the semi-finals. Every team had either stayed at the same level from last time or improved, apart from us and maybe India.

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For some time now I have touched on the fact that our players seem to demonstrate little intelligence in their conduct and play. The intelligence that inclines you to take those little singles, bowl a particular ball, or play a particular shot, how to stand, run or dive in a particular way on the cricket field. The intelligence that tells you when boundaries are needed or when singles are needed, and the intelligence that tells you not to try and bite a hard leather ball with dozens of cameras on you.

The Dawn newspaper has recently published comments by former coach Intikhab Alam in which he says that many of the Pakistan players are ‘mentally retarded’. His exact words were “…they are mentally retarded people. They do not know that they are representing the country”. I would have to say that this seems to fit in very well with some of the things we see from the Pakistani players on and off the cricket field.

The issue is how you address such a situation and this leads to the same place as every question in regards to problems with Pakistan cricket leads to. Without a stronger government that works for its people, the society in Pakistan, where our cricketers come from, will not develop as quickly as it should. While the puppet is in place to fight somebody else’s ‘war on terror’, the Pakistan people will continue getting a raw deal.

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Strangely, there was a chance that Pakistan, the World Champions, could have been out of the tournament just 24 hours into their defence. But a relatively comfortable win against Bangladesh has erased that fear. Barring an unexpected win for Bangladesh over Australia, Pakistan can now look forward to the super-eight stages of the competition but with a lot of improvements to make.

Though the openers did very well against Bangladesh, they became unstuck against Australia, who look like a force to be reckoned with having got their selection right this time around. Salman Butt played a nice knock in the first game but, and there’s always a but with Salman, he let himself down when it really mattered. It’s fine to do well against Bangladesh but his poor innings against Australia, a game in which Butt-er fingers also dropped catch, has made his Bangladesh innings pretty much insignificant in my eyes. The question mark is still there; will Butt deliver with the bat when it’s really needed? I’ve certainly given up on him ever improving his fielding. I just feel Imran Nazir should be here in his place, as Mohammad Hafeez could quite easily have played the consolidatory role Butt is probably in the line-up for. Added to his batting, Nazir is also one of our best fielders.

Captain Shahid Afridi also needs to step up his game. Not only has his batting and bowling been poor, but so has his captaincy. Clapping the Salman Butt dropped catch is just not good enough. Imran khan would have stared at Butt until he disintegrated into the ground beneath him. These are grown men; there is no place for these niceties. Watch an Australia drop a catch and watch the reaction of the captain and bowler, and you could bet they won’t be clapping their hands.

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