What went wrong...

It has been almost a year I have stopped following cricket. Pakistan’s continuous failure has forced me bet no more on the game. It’s a dilemma, win money betting against Pakistan or lose money betting for Pakistan. In either case, we are certain that Pakistan is not going to win!

I have been seeing Pakistan’s unrelenting dismal performance and wondering what is going wrong? Things are slowly turning from bad to worse in cricket, just like how other things are declining in the country. I come to a conclusion that we were never on the right track and the way we were going for past decade or two we were doomed to failure.

Why Indians failed to produce any express fast bowlers? The answer is simple, because they never had any fast bowlers. The kids aspire to become Amarnath, Gavaskar, Tendulkar and Dhoni but not many would dream of becoming the next Srinath, Prasad or Balaji.

However, Pakistan’s case was a bit different. Despite producing legends in the bowling department we do have some heroics in the batting area as well. It would be wrong to say that our kids do not aspire to become the next Miandad, Saeed Anwar or Inzimam. So the question again rises, what went wrong? Why are we failing in both departments?

Regardless of having some exceptional talent in the past Pakistan barely enjoyed the position of being the world number 1 or number 2.

The critical failure factor that I have come across is the dismal attitude of our legends. Most of our legendary cricketers failed on the moral grounds. Cricket Pakistan witnessed its peak in 1992 when the underdogs managed to upset the top cricketing nations and won the world cup. In his book, Imran Khan, the captain of 92 world cup winning squad, mentioned the incident of players he hand-picked and nurtured walked out from a post-world cup fund raiser thinking Imran is taking away all their cash prizes. To this Khan quoted:

“I can’t help feeling that the seeds of greed were sown after the 1992 World Cup. Altogether the winnings were 90,000 pounds each. No Pakistani cricketers had ever made so much money.”

There is barely any reason not to believe Imran, as match fixing became visible soon after his retirement. Imran Khan’s role was succeeded by the young wonderfully talented Wasim Akram – who is undoubtedly among the best fast bowlers of the world.

However, Wasim’s time was probably the most corrupt era of Cricket Pakistan and match fixing probably evolved during that period. The fixing allegations haunted Pakistan in every major series since then. Saleem Malik was life banned. Several others were reported over fixing but all escaped, whistleblowers like Rashid Latif, Basit Ali, Aaquib Javed and likewise were neatly sidelined. This nurtured match fixing in Cricket Pakistan. The disgraceful 2010 spot fixing scandal was the outcome of what was going around in our cricket since 1994.

While some legends had monetary greed, others were seriously challenged by disciplinary issues; the two biggest names of Pakistan in the last decade, Shoaib Akhtar and Shahid Afridi, time and again provided reasons to the world media to disgrace and ridicule the country.

Pakistan is perhaps the only nation who has been targeted by the western media for match fixing, spot fixing, ball tampering, ball biting, pitch tampering, physical assault among players, dope scandal, carrying drugs while travelling, fake injuries, and so much more. The two sad aspects are: a) all these incidents happened within a period of just 15 years b) in most cases, the star players/legends were involved.

The country is going through its worst phase where even the existence of Pakistan is under threat. In these circumstances, cricket has always played a major role in re-uniting and re-building the nation. Unfortunately, the wrong-doings which started in mid 90s has taken its peak and it is difficult to rebound. As much as I am convinced Pakistan will continue to do well in UAE, there is very little hope elsewhere.

The only way to revive cricket in Pakistan would be winning the 2015 World Cup – this would be our best chance provided they are led by someone who have passion and vision to achieve the glory.