Rain washed away the last Pakistan game and so deservedly the team is headed back home. They must have found solace in the fact that the West Indian & English teams were at the airport with them and the South African players were seeing them all off. It has been a crazy world cup so far. The format is whacky. Some of the choices made by some teams were whacky. Some of the results have been whacky. And yet I do not see this as an interesting world cup at all. Infact the Super Six matches are just a formality in my opinion barring one or two games. The fate of the semifinalists barring one is clearly sealed. The points carry over system is a flawed idea & has caused this tournament already to have lost all its shine. Let’s hope the semifinals and final provide some excitement cause otherwise I think we have just witnessed the beginning of the end of the most boring world cup ever.

First, let us talk about the Pakistan v. Zimbabwe game. Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat. Now how a batting side, which scored about 250 runs against Namibia & Holland expected itself to make 350, I will never know. It was absurd considering that it was raining. Why not just put the opposition in and in a rain-interrupted morning try and bowl them out for less than 150. The ball would have wobbled around and the wicket & the ground would have had moisture so the runs would have been hard to get. There was a good chance to get the top order out early & Zimbabwe’s lower order would have been exposed. Pakistan’s batting had a much better chance of getting 150 in 12 overs by throwing the bat at everything, which is the way they play anyway. Anyways…so after batting first they showed no urgency. It did not help that for the first time in the tournament they had the batting order, which they should have played with all along. Salim, Saeed, Yousuf, Inzi & Younis. This was the right idea if we were playing India, England or Australia not when we were playing Zimbabwe in a game where we needed 350 in 50 overs. Why Afridi was played against India, Australia & England and NOT against Holland, Namibia & Zimbabwe I will never know or understand. He had a much better chance of coming off against the lowly medium pacers of the lesser teams than the good fast bowlers of the top echelon teams. It did not matter anyway as only about 15 overs could be bowled before abandonment. However, Inzi’s terrible trot continued when he hit the ball from the middle of the bat only to find deep mid-wicket. What a bust! I cannot remember any such debacle apart from Malik’s 1992 campaign with the bat. He is a big boy though and should come out of this stronger if he has any character. Malik did. He became one of our main stays in the 1994 campaign at home against Australia and also captained the side. Maybe Inzi can work harder and come out just as strong. Who knows? Pakistani players have not been known to bounce back too strong. It will be a real test for him.

So Pakistan has gone home deservedly. I hope that we realize what is the next step. I hope the board’s top brass resigns. It does not matter if they are sincere & it does not matter if they have done good things at the grass roots level. After a debacle like this any manager of a business would be fired. So Mr. Zia and most of his cohorts should go home. We need new blood on the top & especially people with some cricketing sense. I think we need to adopt the baseball coaching style. A coach for batting, one for bowling & one for fielding is in order. The manager should run the show & the captain should have the power to make plans with the manager as well as be part of the selection committee. On top of this the captain should have total control in the field. I propose that Miandad should come back as batting coach. We should get Imran or Wasim when he retires to coach our bowlers. Get some Australian or South African to be our fielding & fitness coach. The manager should be someone with cricket experience but more importantly skills to manage talent…motivation skills, ability to analyze data, communication skills & leadership skills. The PCB chairman should be someone like Imran who can both focus on grass roots & current team at the same time and redo our cricketing structure. We need an NCAA type body which gets cricket going in schools, Colleges & Universities. We need self-sustaining grounds & ground staff. This means they should be able to make money from the stadium to pay for themselves & the upkeep of the ground. We need someone with business acumen to run this as a business unit. The army does not have the skills to do this. I hope that we do not overreact and fire every good player we have. This will set us back 10 years. Wasim played his heart out and bowled brilliantly. Shoaib & Inzi have enough talent to come back after a bad tournament. Saeed & Youhana showed signs of getting their form back. Let’s find backups for these guys without shoving them out the door. Let us have specialist bats at the top 5 positions and have backups. Do not move players around to fill a batting slot. If you have 4 good openers only two play, the others sit out. So for e.g., have Saeed, Salim, Taufeeq & Imran as your 4 openers. Only two out of them should play at a time & the ones in form should play. Youhana should be your one down & maybe have Waseem as the backup. Inzi will be at number 4…find a player who can fill in his shoes once he retires. Younis at number 5 with maybe Hasan Raza as his backup. Allrounders like Shahid, Razzaq, Shoaib Malik & Azhar can fight for the number 6 slot. The keeper Rashid at 7 with maybe Moin as his backup till we find someone else. The bowling department is Wasim, Shoaib, Saqlain, Sami, Zahid & Waqar. Depending on form & wicket, 4 out of those guys can play. Persist with people at their spots. If someone has played at number 4 all his life in domestic cricket, let him compete for that place…do not move him around. In terms of the captaincy, I think everyone is in agreement that Waqar should quit. He does not need to just announce his retirement but should step down for someone else. I think getting a young person in there who has some character and cricket acumen will be a good idea. Out of the lot that I have talked about above, I am not sure if someone really stands out. I think it should not be our best player either on batting or bowling as it puts too much pressure on them. The guy needs to be level headed with some fire in the belly. Razzaq & Younis seem to be two players who have the potential of being good captains, however I do not think either of them have captained in the domestic circuit. It may be a good idea to get a senior player to take over the reigns and groom someone younger in the domestic circuit. Maybe give Inzi a chance & get Younis or Razzaq to captain every other one-day game to get some experience. I think it will be a huge decision and the one who gets selected as captain will be the one who defines Pakistan cricket for the next 10 years. They should stop playing musical chairs at that spot.

Back to the issue of the format of this tournament. The best format for me is the round robin…everybody plays each other once & then semis…which we had in 1992. Or we could have a two pool first round & then quarter finals, semis & final. This way the 8 best teams Aus, SA, SL, Eng, WI, Pak, India & NZ have a chance of coming through. No carry over points please. Look at the situation today. If NZ loses two games and Kenya gets thrashed in all three, Kenya will go through to the semis. That is ridiculous. However, I want that to happen so that NZ learn a lesson. Either the ICC makes a decision for everyone to avoid going to a country or everyone goes there. NZ & Eng made ridiculous decisions. I agree with Holding, they should have been thrown out of the cup & their matches not counted. Someone also made a good point that along with NZ & Eng getting zero points for not playing, they should have been penalized on run rate too. It is almost a foregone conclusion that Aus, India & SL will go through to the semis. NZ needs to win two games to go ahead of Kenya otherwise Kenya goes through. Let us assume NZ makes it. I would suspect it would be Aus, SL, India & NZ in that order. This would make for two interesting games. I think the only team that can knock off Aus is NZ. They have a bitter rivalry. It is a poor man’s India-Pak game. The other game will be a rematch of the 1996 semifinal, which ended in crowd trouble in India. I would be really surprised if Aus does not easily win it all yet again. It is almost like a tournament where one out of Agassi or Sampras have lost early and the rest is really a formality.