Bat and ball / Andrew Hughes / 11 January 2010 / 1

Pakistan's long-suffering followers have had to put up with some shocking defeats over the years, but few will have hurt more than the tame surrender in Sydney. Andrew Hughes asks why a team capable of hitting the heights is just as likely to plumb the depths.

The Second Test in Sydney last week was the third time in three years that the Australians have managed to win against the odds at the SCG. But this time, their victory owed as much to their opponents failings as it did to Aussie never-say-die spirit. Pakistani fans as well as punters who had backed the tourists were watching in disbelief as Mohammed Yousuf's men turned a 206 run first innings lead into a 36 run defeat.

Yet, to anyone who has been watching this Jekyll and Hyde outfit in recent years, this defeat was entirely predictable. As were the three dropped catches by Kamran Akmal that allowed Australia to set a worthwhile target. Akmal is an ordinary keeper. He isn't the first gloveman to be picked for his batting. But unlike M S Dhoni, Brendon McCullum or Matt Prior, he has made virtually no improvement since his international debut. And he is not entirely to blame for that.

The fact is that he has not been put under any pressure to improve; indeed, he has been selected consistently, almost regardless of his wicket keeping performances. As far back as 2008, when Geoff Lawson was coach, he approached the Pakistan Cricket Board to hire a specialist wicket keeping coach to address Akmal's technical deficiencies. The PCB refused the request, apparently put off by the cost of $50000 With some justification, Rixon has recently pointed out that this short-sighted decision has finally come back to hurt them.

The job of a cricket board is to put things in place to ensure that their national team can be as successful as possible. Talent is not in short supply in Pakistan. Good administration most certainly is. While the rest of the world expand their backroom staff, Pakistan have a sixty-eight-year-old coach in Intikhab Alam, in his second stint in the job, no fielding specialist and no batting coach. The PCB itself is under the control of politicians and the result is instability all the way down the line.

Administrators, coaches, captains and players are continually looking over their shoulders, trying to secure their position, to gather allies and all at the expense of team performance. Plots, cliques, allegations and resignations characterised the last decade of Pakistani cricket. Occasionally, calm breaks out, when a captain such as Imran Khan takes control of the whole show or when figures like Inzamam ul-Haq can at least unite the players behind them.

Mohammed Yousuf is not such a figure. It is easy to feel some sympathy for this earnest, quiet and undoubtedly hard-working cricketer. Whether he wanted the job or not, after the latest resignation of Younis Khan, there was no one else. Yousuf has done his best, but his timidity on the last day at Sydney set exactly the wrong tone. Anticipation of victory morphed subtly into fear of losing as the captain set a bizarrely defensive field with just two wickets left to take.

In their defence, it has to be said that this is also an extremely inexperienced Test team, not just in terms of age, but, crucially, in the important skills and ways of thinking required to turn a favourable position into victory. Three times this year, against Sri Lanka, New Zealand and now Australia, this batting order has failed when victory was within their gasp. Perhaps they will learn from it or perhaps, like England in the 1990s, too many such defeats will scar them for the rest of their careers.

And yet, last summer, they won the World Twenty20, playing with joyous freedom in a format that encourages risk taking. The hero of that tournament was Shahid Afridi, now the Twenty20 captain and just the sort of buccaneering, dominant, popular cricketer who could bring out the adventurous spirit of Pakistani cricket in the Test arena. It will happen sooner rather than later.

But not just yet. For now, a disheartened squad travel to Tasmania for the Third Test, which gets underway on Thursday. They are in disarray, with Umar Akmal even refusing to train in protest at the potential dropping of his elder brother. The market has them written off at [6.2]. Knowing Pakistan, they will probably win.

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1. er mary | 16 January 2010

   horse racing as well as cricket is there no end? No mention of Fairyhouse tho'....

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