After the above series, Pakistan will be involved in the Asia cup at home which precedes the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Champions Trophy which is also to be held in Pakistan provided there are no security issues. In December, India will (hopefully) arrive for a 3-test 5-ODI series. This would mean that this is the only test series Pakistan would have played since December 2007 which was also against India. This equates to a whole year without test cricket. Is test cricket not the most important and highly regarded form of the game? It doesn’t seem that way to the ICC and the PCB.

Yet 2008 does not see the end to this problem. If you have a look at Pakistan’s future tours programme (FTP) you will not fail to notice that it is riddled with one-day matches. Some may argue that not much could have been done about Australia’s pull-out but even with those three tests, the picture would not have looked a whole lot brighter. The ICC is responsible for drawing up the FTP (signed by the ten full member countries) thus some of the responsibility lies with them. The thing is that the PCB has not exactly helped itself either by flying around the world meeting the boards of five of the top sides in an attempt to fill Pakistan’s FTP gaps with 38 more ODIs for the period between 2008 and 2010. The worrying thing is that the PCB was actually pleased about this as if it was some kind of major accomplishment.

Much of the blame lies with the former PCB administration which was in charge and responsible for agreeing Pakistan’s FTP back in 2004 when the current programme was drawn up. However, the current administrations argument that more tests could not be added to the schedule as the FTPs for most of the other test playing nations were filled sounds very weak. It raises the question why some of these extra 38 ODIs weren’t sacrificed for more tests. If the other nations had gaps in their FTP to fit in extra ODIs, surely these gaps could have been filled with tests. But the depressing fact is that test cricket simply does not bring in as much revenue as the shorter forms of the game and with plenty of those in the future, the I€€ and P€B will be more than happy.

But what will become of Pakistan as a test cricketing force if test cricket continues to come second to the money spinning ODIs and Twenty20s? These are testing times for Pakistan cricket, but not in the way we had hoped.