The poor performance displayed by our cricket team seems to have baffled and shocked the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), which has completely lost its head and is coming up with most bizarre and strange plans to bring a change, but these plans are so amazing that all cricket experts are perplexed. Teams are made by the Captain’s and the Coaches that is why history remembers them.
The most startling issue is the new appointment of a little known Mr Trent Woodhill from Australia as batting coach. Considering him some sort of a magician he is engaged only for a period of three weeks, perhaps to inject some sort of a magic in the players to win the English series!
Being a former cricket administrator, and a lifetime observer cum analyst of the game, when I read about the proposal I searched my memory to recollect ‘who was this guy?’ I was relieved of find that the great Hanif Muhammad, Javed Miandad, Sarfraz Nawaz, Rashid Latif and many top cricketers were as puzzled as I was. Is it not surprising that when commenting on the issue, one of the greatest batsmen of the world, former skipper Hanif Muhammad exclaimed ‘I have heard his name for the first time in my life? I am amazed how the PCB chose him, when he had no identity in international cricket.’ Other former cricketers also expressed similar views.
The PCB having gone nuts with the former cricketers on its pay roll drawing salaries of few hundred thousand each per month have turned into ‘yes men’ and the Advisory Council has become deaf and dumb; the cricket board does not know what to do. They think that the remedy for all the ills of our cricket lies in the appointment of ‘foreign coaches’. Condemning a galaxy of former Pakistan players suitable for the job, the PCB top brass picked up Day Whatmore of Australia for appointment as Chief Coach. Having drawn millions of dollars as emoluments Whatmore proved a total flop, not being able to raise the standards of our cricket at all. He also inducted one of his Australian colleagues as fielding coach, who also miserably failed to improve the fielding standards.
Despite all the opposition from cricket experts and top cricketers, on account of serious language gap, between foreign coaches and our semi-literate players, the desired results have not been achieved; yet the PCB continues to patronize them. Of late, the nit-wit of a coach named Trent Woodhill who has not play a single Test for Australia has been assigned to join the Pakistan team in England and stay with them for three weeks, to coach the boys during the Champions Trophy. I am surprised at the PCB’s buffoonery for not realizing that an international tournament is not the appropriate time for coaching. The nation holds no great results from this, another strange move by PCB.
RAFI NASIM,
Lahore, May 15.