Hassan Cheema
Blame domestic cricket for Pakistan's losses
The pitches don't encourage the development of world-class talent, so what can the captain, or anyone else, do?
Hassan Cheema
08-Jan-2017
Misbah-ul-Haq wanted to retire as early as the autumn of 2014. In hindsight that would have been a mistake. He'll probably end up retiring after this Australia tour, or at the most after the West Indies tour later this year, and most people will feel like he ended up staying on too long.
Perhaps he should have retired with the mace in hand, having just completed a famous series in England. But drunk on his team's successes, and on the belief that they could win down under, Misbah has ended up harming his legacy over the last few months of his tenure. He'll still leave with the second most number of wins for an Asian captain (behind MS Dhoni) and the most wins outside Asia for an Asian captain (tied for the top, with or without Zimbabwe). And he'll still leave having placed himself on Pakistan's Rushmore. But he'll now leave with a bad taste in the mouth.
The captain whose bowling plans have inspired tomes of writing had his opposite number questioning whether he had any plan whatsoever. Through it all, the man who could have - and has - helped Misbah the most in this regard was up in the commentary box.
Full postWhy Pakistan wanted to be Australia
For decades, the team from down under was held up as an example of everything Pakistan cricket needed to aspire to being. Things are a little different now
Hassan Cheema
10-Dec-2016
In the fall of 1999, Pakistan went to Australia with what they believed was the most talented squad they had ever had. They were barely six months removed from having lost a World Cup they thought was their own, and the series was thus presented as a time for revenge. The Test team had been plagued by inconsistency over the previous five years, but they could always put that down to infighting and to being led by sub-par captains. Under Wasim Akram, by contrast, Pakistan's record was exemplary. Since losing in Australia four years earlier, he had taken charge of five Test series - winning four and "drawing" one. Even the lone drawn series, away to India in 1999, could be classified as a success, with the third Test of that tour being a victory on course to winning the Asian Test championship. The confidence they had going to Australia wasn't misplaced.
A decade earlier Pakistan's greatest Test team had gone to Australia having not lost a single one of their previous ten Test series - including two against the uber dominant West Indies. They returned with a one-nil loss. Surely this time it would be different?
It was. But not the way they imagined it would be. Pakistan lost nine of their first ten matches on the 1999-2000 tour. That streak, which included all three Tests, began with their inability to play a 50-year old Dennis Lillee and ended with them being blown away by Australia's second-tier attack. For the first time in over a decade Pakistan realised that even their best might not be good enough against the best.
Full postIs Pakistan's streak about to end?
They've gone seven series without a loss for only the third time in their history, but this just might be as far as it goes this time
Hassan Cheema
23-Nov-2016
As history begins to repeat itself, it is the familiarity that connects the dots. On the morning of the second day of the Test at Hagley Oval, as all the work that Pakistan's openers had done was frittered away, it was that feeling of familiarity that was most obvious.
For Pakistanis of a certain generation, tours to the antipodes are tied in to memories that are easily evoked - of godforsaken hours on wintry nights, of hope springing eternal, and of batsmen struggling to cope with alien conditions. It is often said that Pakistan's worship of bowling, particularly the faster kind, has to do with the number of great fast bowlers the country has produced. But at times like this, one often feels that it's the fact that the bowlers have delivered great wins in spite of the incompetence of the batsmen that leads to them being treated as higher beings.
Pakistan haven't lost a Test series to New Zealand in three decades. Even their last series loss there came about in a match that Wasim Akram got his first ten-for in, in the great tradition of bowlers trying to cover up for the incompetence of batsmen.
Despite this record, it's not as if Pakistani batsmen have conquered New Zealand. Pakistan went to New Zealand three times in the 1990s: in each instance, in their first Test innings of the tour, they were bowled out for under 220. Across the Tasman, where Pakistan will go in a fortnight's time, their record is worse: in their first Test innings on five of their last eight tours to Australia, they have been bowled out for under 180.
Full postThe myth of Pakistan's weak pace attack
Sure the fast bowling unit picked for the New Zealand tour is second-string, but it has delivered more often than not
Hassan Cheema
10-Nov-2016
Sometime during Pakistan's first full day in New Zealand, some of the players might have turned on the television to watch Australia's fourth innings in Perth. They will have seen Kagiso Rabada doing what he does. And beyond the admiration for his skills, there will have been envy - what Pakistan would give to have their own Rabada right now - followed by a sigh, because they would remember, more than most, that it wasn't long ago that Pakistan seemed to hold the trademark on young speed demons.
Last month Bangladesh's Mehedi Hasan became only the 13th player to take a Test five-for before his 19th birthday. Of the previous 12, six were Pakistanis, four of them fast bowlers. And that list doesn't even include the likes of Mohammad Sami, Mohammad Zahid and Shoaib Akhtar, all of whom managed the feat in their early 20s.
It is in this context that the supposed current travails of Pakistani fast bowling are measured. Of the five quick bowlers Pakistan have taken to New Zealand (Mohammad Amir, Imran Khan, Rahat Ali, Sohail Khan and Wahab Riaz), and will most likely retain for the Australia leg of the tour, only one is under the age of 28 - Amir, who has already lived a life far more eventful than most people his age have done.
Full postWhy Pakistan cricket is stagnating
Looking at their "home" record brings to light a number of reasons why their one-day game, particularly, is leagues behind that of other teams
Hassan Cheema
10-Oct-2016
It doesn't take much to set off a Pakistani fan. The recent movements on the Test-rankings table have provided plenty of fodder for discourse, to say the least. The irony of it is that in trying to discredit others, Pakistanis often fall back upon the same tropes that have been used against them, talking about discrepancies between teams' home and away records, and the quality of opposition faced.
Yet for those within the dressing room, that equivalence is considered false, particularly the notion that Pakistan playing in the UAE is like any other team playing at home. According to one Pakistani player, you can consider it the same the day a Pakistani team gets the crowd and control over the pitches that other Asian nations do. According to another, you can consider it truly Pakistan's home the day another team can't put out their best XI for a home Test because of visa issues. There have even, finally, been some public utterances about the difficulty of being nomads.
But if Pakistan really want to prove their point, all they have to do is point towards their "home" ODI record. Of course that's not exactly likely to happen since many of those complaining were responsible for that record.
Full postThe Younification of Team Misbah
This Pakistan team's ability to prove people wrong time and again is remarkable. So also the shaping influence of two elder statesmen
Hassan Cheema
17-Aug-2016
Two men sat around the big round table in the dressing room. They were looking out towards their home away from home - a Sharjah pitch that had given them more joy than either of them could properly recollect. They had just finished an argument over selection - the conclusion, as is the case in most dressing rooms, particularly when the older of those two gentlemen is involved, being that the captain is always right. Even when he doesn't have the consensus. For he's the one responsible for the result.
That argument now over, it was time to discuss more important matters. Misbah-ul-Haq turned towards Wasim Akram and unloaded a series of queries about England - about the pitches, the conditions, and everything else. Even in the middle of his title-winning PSL campaign, the upcoming tour of England remained in the front of his mind.
It had been so from the moment Pakistan won another series in the autumn. Misbah's final press conference then had revolved around his future and the tour to England, and not what his team had just done. Within hours accusations of cowardice and timidity had begun to float: obviously Misbah wouldn't go to England because he wasn't man enough, because he knew that he and his team would be "exposed" in alien conditions. That is what spurred him on to drag his 42-year-old body up and down the stairs of the National Cricket Academy as far younger men looked on with a mixture of awe and ridicule - their conclusion being that the old man had gone mad.
Full postThe truth about Younis and Yasir
Or, the Pakistani way of judging talent and contributions
Hassan Cheema
28-Jul-2016
Pakistan were in trouble. Their unbeaten record in their adopted home was under threat. At lunch on day one of their series against Australia in 2014, the scoreboard read: "Pakistan 50/2 in 29 overs."
It wasn't unexpected either. Pakistan had not won a series for two years. Australia, meanwhile, had reclaimed the No. 1 ranking earlier in the year after destroying England and South Africa. Azhar Ali was going at his unique morose pace but was still far better off than Younis Khan, who had managed 14 off 77 balls. At that moment a former Pakistan cricketer sashayed into the press box with two predictions: first, Pakistan were going to win this series; second, Younis would score big, and continue to do so until he played on a wicket with steep bounce.
Over the next fortnight, as Pakistan ground Australia down on course to a historic series win, those early troubles were forgotten. The second era of Team Misbah had begun.
Full postWill the real Pakistan please stand up?
The world watches to see whether they will validate their current form as one of the world's top teams or return in tatters, having become tabloid fodder
Hassan Cheema
13-Jul-2016
Stupid as it sounds, Pakistan hasn't had a census in 18 years. Thus, everything from federal and local policy to the understanding of urban planning is built on estimates and calculations based on what little data can be gathered. A cursory search for the population of Karachi reveals numbers ranging from 17 to 24 million, a range that makes the pre-Brexit polls look like the Oracle of Delphi. That seems appropriate for a country that would rather go with the flow than have anything to do with numbers. What we can gather, though, is that over two-thirds of Pakistan's population is under the age of 35 - or to put it another way, has no memory of the last time Pakistan toured England without any real controversies.
That's not to say that England's tours to Asia have been comradely sojourns. From Idrees Baig to Shakoor Rana, Pakistani umpires have rarely seen eye to eye with visiting English players, although neither party could ever claim to be mankind's angels. And from Moin Khan's time-wasting tactics (in Karachi in 2000) to Misbah-ul-Haq's time-wasting tactics, the mythical spirit of cricket hasn't exactly been observed.
Not that the Pakistanis are the lone culprits in this - names like Bill Athey, David Constant and Ian Botham are remembered differently in Pakistan (for those who care to remember them) than they are elsewhere. But 1987, with its incidents of crowd trouble and player confrontations, was the true beginning of the modern cricketing relationship between the two countries. In that year they played eight Tests against each other, and fulfilled the dictionary definition of familiarity breeding contempt.
Full postHow important is the England tour for Pakistan?
It just might be their most significant series in years - not that you could tell by the way they've gone about preparing for it
Hassan Cheema
18-Jun-2016
In the halcyon days of autumn last year, Pakistani cricket was in a state of optimism. Pakistan had once again held the fortress - their home away from home - in Test cricket, and seemed to finally have picked themselves off the floor in limited-overs cricket. The PSL was just around the corner, and a new era was about to dawn.
In the midst of this, plans were made for the summer ahead. The Test specialists, the likes of Shan Masood, Zulfiqar Babar and the experienced middle order would all go to England early to prepare themselves for the mega tour. There was even talk of them getting county contracts. Pakistan's successes in England have traditionally involved teams filled with players experienced in county cricket, and perhaps even half a summer could help in cutting down the gap they needed to make up. In fact, the rise and fall of Pakistani cricket can pretty much be traced back to the involvement (or lack thereof) of their players in local cricket in England. Of course, this being Pakistan, the plans of men did go agley: in the end, none of it came to be, even with Misbah-ul-Haq's almost desperate appeals for a county gig.
The small solace that they do have is the fact that they'll be arriving in England four weeks before the first Test - unheard of in modern Pakistani cricket, and even that supposedly took far more effort than such a thing should.
Full postPakistan's soft coup
That the PCB is implementing some of former coach Waqar Younis' recommendations is good news. But will the optimism last?
Hassan Cheema
31-May-2016
The corporate report - whether produced by Lodha, Woolf, Barriteau, Argus or whoever - is now commonplace across the sporting world. A corporate response in the era of corporate sports, a chance to diagnose ailments you will not really attempt to cure.
And yet - despite their obsession with making committees and "calling inquiries" - Pakistan cricket has not had such a report. For it to happen, the PCB would have to first decide whether it is a corporate body or an old boys' club or a faltering government institution. Right now even the veneer of corporate professionalism seems beyond their grasp, as ex-pros, yes-men and bureaucrats continue to drive the train nowhere.
For the moment, though, they have found an alternative. Former coach Waqar Younis' report after the 2016 World T20 has become the unofficial constitution for the team's immediate future. Since his departure - following a round on the talk-show circuit that would make Donald Trump proud - many of his recommendations have been taken to heart by the PCB. Shahid Afridi, Umar Akmal and Ahmed Shehzad, Waqar's bete noirs, have been ostracised. No one really is sure if that's necessarily a good thing, but the majority think that it's better than the alternative.
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