Whatmore criticised after Test defeats in SA
Pakistan coach Dav Whatmore. – Photo by AFP/File
KARACHI: Pakistan coach Dav Whatmore has come under severe criticism from former players and fans after the team’s successive defeats in the Test series in South Africa, with some in the cricket fraternity holding him responsible for the debacle.
Whatmore, a former Australian Test player who took charge of the Pakistan team in March last year, is being blamed for not being assertive with the players and for failing to devise an effective strategy to counter the South African fast bowling attack.
The Australian, who enjoys a good reputation as a professional cricket coach, did wonders with the Sri Lankan and Bangladesh national teams during his earlier tenures as coach few years ago.
“Reports coming in from South Africa confirm that Whatmore has not been able to assert himself on the players despite the poor show in Tests and has not done much to prepare the players for a possible comeback in the third Test.
“When a team performs as badly as Pakistan has in SA, the coach needs to be very strict and straight-forward with the players but neither Whatmore nor bowling coach Mohammad Akram or fielding coach Julian Fountain have been tough with the players.
Former Test players including Rashid Latif, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mohsin Khan have dubbed Whatmore as a ‘big disappointment’ during his stint with the Pakistan team so far.
“The problem clearly appears to be that Whatmore is not willing to rub the Test and T20 captains or some other senior players in the team the wrong way by playing tough. He is not willing to take a stand on some key issues or the selection matters which is harming the team’s performance,” a team source said.
“This is not the Whatmore everybody use to talk about in the past,” said another source close to the team.
“Even when Misbah and Hafeez are making wrong calls, Whatmore is not taking a stand or telling them that they are wrong.”
Cricket analysts believe that unless the team turns around its performance in the last Test and in the one-dayers and T20s in South Africa, Whatmore could face some hard questions from the board chairman.—Agencies
Sadly to say Dav Whatmore is a redundant person like a spent cartridge.
Whatmore and other coaches have very well understood now that how pakistani team players are selected. Purely, on favoritism and sifarish and not on merit. True examples of those are Akmal brothers, Shoaib Malik, Misbah, Imran Farhat etc. Pakistanis do not need any coach. They themselves are master of all sort of games and tactics to be selected in the team every time. No respectable coach should accept offer from PCB because they will not coach a professional team players but bunch of crooks.
Oh God. These “experts” again. Cricket is a game played by the players, while the captain plays the central role. Everyone knows a good coach plays a very restricted role. Coach is only responsible to prepare tactics to win the matches and may be physical and mental conditioning of the players, and in both tests, Pakistan had chances to put the SA team down, but the players could not apply their techniques nor the captain kept the pressure on.
You want to blame anyone blame the team\captain not the coach.
Criticism is from former test cricketers who are also eyeing the spot and above that is only thing which they can do, TV channel like GEO is primarily running on negative aspects of cricket.
Ofcourse it is not only the captain who takes decisions concerning selection of playing eleven. Playing Rahat instead of Irafan and then in the second match not playing Rehman are the decisions to which Watmore is party to. Even when Misbah did not bowl Hafeez in the second innings, Watmore could have asked Misbah for that. On batting side, Nasir Jamshed goes on to get LBW on the same ball while playing cross batted shot to straight ones. I can’t see any positive contribution by Mr. Watmore at all. Actually all those coaches who play as second to the captain are unsure about their abilities and do so to retain their job. Pakistan needs some one like Chappel.
If Dav was successful in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, does that beg the question the Pakistan team is “uncoachable”?
I think PCB had made big blunder by removing Mohsin khan as a head coach.Our media and some vested interest in board are equally responsible for that action.Mohsin is patriot Pakistani who can feel the pain of loosing a test or series.Foreign coach is more interested in their tenure and money they are getting.So they do not want to be strict on players ,captain,selection committee and board.We have seen Mohsin pointing out fault of players.We have seen example of Umer Akmal and others.He used to fight for deserving players.He believed in performance.He knows how to handle players and media.Even though he has been under paid in compare to foreign coach.He has done his best and bring Pakistani team to number 4 in test ranking despite not playing on their home ground.
With due respect to the trained and accredited coach, for a team like the ‘green-shirts’ he is a big misfit because of the huge differences in culture, language, norms, values, history, precedents and traditions in all sections of society to say the least, between his country of birth and brought-up and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan