Pakistan cricket and the Multiverse of chaos

“Pakistan cricket at its best: One minute down, next minute up.”

When Nasser Hussain said this about Pakistan cricket, it felt like an apt summation of their fate and performance in the sport. However, it’s also a lazy affirmation about what makes them mercurial on the field. It hides the systemic flaws that stop them from being consistent.

Being mercurial can bring the fans in, as it keeps them on their toes. But what about the time when things are not going their way? What happens when a bunch of players go out of form simultaneously? What do you do when the wretched transition from being a mercurial team into a lackadaisical one is finally complete?

This is exactly what’s happening with Pakistan cricket right now. They have failed to win the last nine Test matches at home and were unceremoniously ousted from the last two World Cups at the group stage. 

There’s a lot of noise as to what’s going wrong. Fingers are being pointed at almost anyone and everyone. Conspiracies are being conjectured out of thin air like new mythologies in the medieval era. However, the problem can be distilled down to some fundamental things that a successful Test side needs to do. And as usual, they are all interlinked. 

It all starts with the pitches

Calling Rawalpindi a highway would be a disgrace because highways are sometimes not that great to drive on, especially when you are from the subcontinent. 

That’s how flat the tracks have been in the stadium ever since Australia landed in Pakistan almost two years ago. And thus began an era of pitches so flat, that it put the Indo-Gangetic basin to shame. 

While Australian batters ground out Pakistan, England played aggressively and scored a world record 506/4 on Day 1 of the Rawalpindi Test. England’s top five continued to average in the mid-50s and scored runs briskly, allowing their bowlers some extra time to bowl Pakistan out on the moribund decks. That strategy worked wonders, and now the world has to suffer with the Bazball psychobabble. 

What it did was that it led to Pakistan’s pace attack bowling themselves into the dust. In the recently completed Test against Bangladesh, their pacers bowled 122.3 overs in hardly eight to nine sessions of play. What’s even more shocking is that they had bowled even more overs than this against New Zealand not so long ago. 

How are they supposed to take wickets on such tracks? It’s hard to ascertain it objectively, but the wearing down of Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah has a lot to do with this. 

The moribund pitches are not only a single problem. They are a rot that has weakened the very roots of Pakistani red-ball cricket. 

Where’s the home Test template, Pakistan?

In the 80s, 90s, and late into the 2000s, Pakistan had a set way of getting 20 wickets — make dry, dead tracks and use reverse swing to dismantle the opposition with their express pace bowlers. If you have any doubts, go and watch a video of Shoaib Akhtar bowling to the Indian batters in Pakistan, where the stumps are flying. There’s a good chance you’ll end up watching that before a bench press for extra oomph in your arms. 

However, lately, Pakistan have failed to exploit that and have been destroyed by the opposition pacers, with their own failing to trouble the batters consistently with either pace or movement. Pat Cummins, Tim Southee, James Anderson, Mark Wood, Mitch Starc, etc., proved much more effective than the Pakistani pacers on these tracks. The numbers below are just staggering, especially the ones from the England series. 

However, what amplifies Pakistan’s misery under home conditions is the lack of a striking spinner who can get wickets through deception in the air and isn’t only reliant on soil erosion for wicket-taking. After the likes of Saeed Ajmal and Yasir Shah, Pakistan have struggled to nail down a spinner for their Test side. 

While Noman Ali showed he could be handy occasionally, Sajid Khan was average at best. Abrar Ahmed definitely showed enough sparks to ignite talks about him being a guaranteed selection in the eleven. However, for reasons only they know, Pakistan decided to go all pace in the first Test against Bangladesh.

The implications of such myopic strategising are reflected in the fact that the England and New Zealand spinners out-bowled theirs significantly. 

The batting has to step up

All of these problems could have been ameliorated a bit had Pakistani batters, especially the top four, shown more resilience and batted out hours and sessions with a single-minded focus. However, the Pakistani batters were outbattled by both top fives except Australia. In their case, when you change the filter to top seven batters, the Aussies have done better than Pakistan. 

Two key batters in this lineup are out of form. Shan Masood has the pedigree to boss these conditions. However, he has been tentative at the crease and perished against disciplined pacers for some reason. Meanwhile, Babar Azam is going through the most horrid phase of his decent-sized Test career. 

Things would get even bleaker for Pakistan if they don’t perform and win games for their sides because it would mean another captaincy change, and this time, Masood would be the sacrificial goat. 

The administration needs to buck up

Mohsin Naqvi runs a Mohsin Cinematic Universe (MCU), where a multiverse exists. In one universe, he’s the Internal Minister of Pakistan. On the other, he runs arguably the fourth-biggest cricket board on Mother Earth. There’s chaos in the entire multiverse, and sadly, the Avengers don’t have jurisdiction outside the NATO nations. 

As a result, you have problems at multiple levels of Pakistan cricket. 

The lack of depth in strike Test bowlers, especially spinners, is a big sign that Pakistan’s domestic cricket isn’t doing its most essential job — being a factory of cricketing talent. To their credit, PCB has introduced a much more streamlined and comprehensive domestic structure that will now include a Champions Cup apart from the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, Pakistan’s premier domestic red-ball tournament. 

The other big issue has been that the PCB continues to mirror the political instability in Pakistan. It’s hard to keep track of the number of times the coaching staff, support staff, selection committee and upper management have changed hands in the last two years in Pakistan cricket. 

How is process-driven and growth-oriented cricket supposed to happen in such an environment of mistrust and constant conniving? Forget winning games; a cricket board can’t manage its existing talent in such a state, and that’s exactly what’s happening with Pakistan cricket. 

In fact, such instability has only accentuated the fissures within the Pakistan team, and the factionalism is almost palpable through the screen. 

At this point in Pakistan cricket, it’s not only important but imperative that the PCB prioritises cricket above everything else. Good administration is the thread that can tie all these problems together and deal with them. From the pitch to the players, a lot rests in the board's hands. 

We don’t know how serious the PCB considers the malaise that’s afflicting their cricket. One wants to hope, but even an intoxicated Nasser Hussain might rethink before saying, “Pakistan cricket at its best; one minute down, next minute up”, with the same enthusiasm again. The downs are too deep to see the way up as of now. 

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