Daily Times

In every institution an analysis of the reasons for failure are essential to establish the root causes, so that the same mistakes are not repeated. In Pakistan, unfortunately — as in any closed society — a post mortem is never really allowed, or its findings are not acted upon, making the whole exercise superfluous. This is the reason behind the increasing decline in our cricketing capabilities. When it was apparent that the Akmal brothers were not obeying instructions, and Kamran Akmal had performed below par, where — on being told he was to be dropped for the next match — he ‘injured’ his finger, alarm bells should have rung in the PCB chairman’s head, and both brothers should have been sent home immediately. However, the chairman chose to ignore the warning signals, and continued with the Akmals.

As a bookie on a talk show recently explained, in every ‘fix’ there is a protector in the administration who ensures that no serious harm will befall the culprits. It has been amply demonstrated that no less than the Chairman PCB, Ijaz Butt, has shepherded the brothers up to the semi-final. We will not be in such a vantage position again for a long time to come, facing such a weakened opposition. The Indians were over the hill, and their star Tendulkar scored his 85 with four very lucky lives. He is a legend used to making chanceless centuries.

In Mohali, he was gifted these chances by an overly generous Pakistani field. If our team management sitting in the Mohali pavilion were not asleep, they would have realised that Misbah was batting at a test innings pace. He played 40 dot balls (including a maiden over), and, as we lost by 29 runs, it can safely be said that we gifted the match to India.

The stupidity of the chairman filtered down to the field, and it is truly surprising that nobody could point out these blunders to the management while the game was on. Surely, the water-boy could have taken the message to Misbah to accelerate the score. Miandad won the World Cup for us by keeping one eye on the scoreboard, and managed the pace of his innings.

With such a surfeit of talent in Pakistan, it is incredible that we could not produce a wicket keeper and Ijaz allowed us to be blackmailed by the Akmal brothers. These two should be banned from Pakistani cricket forever for their role in the New Zealand game. Umar Akmal should not be allowed anywhere near a cricket ground. All of these blunders can be blamed simply on the stupidity of the chairman, deliberate or otherwise.

Even his claiming the credit for the high finish is nonsense, for the cup should have been in our possession, so bad were the others. We were worse.

We have only our political leadership to blame and ourselves for having allowed their elevation to power. Cricket is our national passion; the entire nation feels gutted, and rightly so, for victory and the cup were both so close.

It does seem that our country has been cheated and our sovereignty surrendered under our very noses by a handful of corrupt elected politicians. That even the Supreme Court (SC) finds its judgments pending execution. No number of postmortems can help if the findings are ignored.

The writer is a freelance columnist