Pakistan cricket has never been too far from crisis. It has seen everything from infighting between the biggest stars to players refusing to take the field, accusations of doping, convictions for ball-tampering, and, oh, so many troubles with match-fixing over the years.
When Mike Hesson said that his players were used to the ‘chaos’ more than him, he was not lying. Kids from dysfunctional families don’t see as much of it as Pakistan’s cricketers, and from a distance, it feels like everyone’s walking on eggshells, with each crackle reaching a world braced to have a laugh at it.
But even for these messy systems, what happened on the tour of England would have been a shock, the kind where you feel like it’s a new low but with a realisation that
newer lows are in the offing. After two heavy defeats in the three-Test series against England, seven players were removed from the squad, and the pair of head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul, only months into the job, were sacked.
Two of the discarded players, Imam-Ul-Haq and Mohammad Rizwan, reached home from the first flight back. Four others continued to stay with the squad and even went to attend the pre-organised meeting with England’s monarch, King Charles III, at Buckingham Palace. The seventh, Salman Agha, the country’s T20I captain who also led in the first Test in Babar Azam’s absence, neither went home nor met the King.
Some of the seven players dropped were decided by white-ball coach Hesson, who was taking over the job for the final Test. Soon, chief selector and former captainMisbah-ul-Haq tendered his resignation after he was seemingly not consulted about the replacements.
We are, as always, working with scraps of information here. But multiple reports confirm that someone in the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) was angered by both Imam and Rizwan for different reasons: Imam was suspected of having faked a calf injury during the second Test and will be investigated, while Rizwan simply pushed someone’s buttons by playing inexplicably poor shots.
This was a new low. But, as aforementioned, there’s never one of them in Pakistan cricket. It was followed by reports that, before sending Imam and Rizwan back, the PCB seized their phones and transferred the data for their investigation before allowing them to leave London. PCB has since strictly requested to not speculate, and so we won’t, but even the biggest Pakistan optimist can’t say it looks good.
Who is making these calls?
The confirmation of PCB’s investigation came from Amir Mir, adviser to PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi. He wrote: “The Pakistan Cricket Board has initiated an internal disciplinary inquiry following media reports concerning discipline and conduct, which are currently being reviewed internally. The PCB handles such matters in accordance with its standard procedures. The process is being conducted under PCB regulations, ensuring that all concerned individuals are given due consideration.”
But the man who spoke to the media, with the authority of someone who made the decisions, was Aqib Javed, selection committee member and PCB’s director of high performance.
“Someone had to take action,” he said. “The world is laughing at us because we can’t even compete. The message we’re sending to the recalled players is that you have to raise your game on important tours and compete, and we should be able to see some effort.”
A PTI report recently said that Javed is the ‘blue-eyed boy’ of Naqvi. Prominent Pakistani columnist, Saad Shafqat, wrote for The Dawn that the man holding the cards is the controversial chairman.
“In all likelihood, the decision-making came solely from the PCB chief, Mr Mohsin Naqvi, himself,” Shafqat wrote. “He may have asked for input from other bigwigs in the PCB’s corporate hierarchy, but none of them have any serious cricketing credentials. One can easily imagine them trying to guess what the boss wanted to hear, and then echoing it implicitly and explicitly.”
As the Federal Minister for Interior and Narcotics Control, Naqvi is an extension of Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML–N). Every Asian country and cricket board, including India, has failed to completely disassociate itself from its national politics and will probably never be able to, but Naqvi is one of the most powerful politicians in the world, holding the post of PCB chairman as a secondary link in his portfolio.
Shafqat said that Naqvi was part of the Pakistani diplomatic team seeking peace in the Middle East, with frequent visits to Iran.
“So we can reasonably conclude that Mr Naqvi, as a cricket administrator, is at best distracted, and at worst negligent,” he wrote.
Another recent PTI report said that Naqvi’s political seniors had conveyed their disappointment with Pakistan’s performance in England to him. For an active politician, the most important thing would always be protecting his image, and if Naqvi can’t dissociate his administrative capabilities from Pakistan’s cricket success, and can not give the cricket the time it needs either, it’ll only lead to knee-jerk reactions.
Politicians bring huge egos with them. You don’t have to go too far beyond the 2025 Asia Cup trophy presentation to imagine how a non-politician, whose appeal at home was not reliant on whether he hands over a title to the deserved winners of a competition who don’t want it from him.
International-level sports are already about egos. The best cricketers reach there usually through so many hardships that their self-belief is stronger than a mountain. To make sports teams work without toxicity, someone in the leadership group has to be able to accept the ‘little brother’ role.
Every sensible voice in Pakistan cricket is talking about needing years to undo the rot. India is too successful a team to compare themselves to Pakistan and find happiness about how far they have come. But they can certainly look at the neighbors and take it as an education in how bad things can get when conflicting interests take control of the sport with unbridled power and backing.
