Gary Kirsten, we hardly knew ye. The obituary for the South African southpaw’s stint in Pakistan cricket might read: “Here lies a white ball coach who presided over zero ODIs.” If there is space on the headstone, it may add that he was a “World Cup- and IPL-winning coach that somehow was deemed surplus to the collective cricketing wisdom of Aqib Javed and Mohsin Naqvi.

Truth be told, when Kirsten’s appointment was announced, my immediate reaction was that it was too good to be true. Systems like ours don’t deserve coaches with the pedigree of Gary Kirsten.

Sure enough, not six months into the job, he was shoved aside, mainly for having the temerity to believe that a coach and captain should be able to select a squad and XI. Perish the thought! Make no mistake, this was our loss, nor Kirsten’s. He has, and will continue to have, suitors from the best international and franchise teams around the world. Health permitting, he will make tons of money and win a lot of trophies for at least the next decade. Pakistan cricket, meanwhile, will lurch from crisis to crisis. There is only one winner in this divorce.

Nevertheless, while Kirsten may have come off “best” in this parting, he was also a victim. Stabs in the back hurt, regardless of how thick the skin is. Decent professionals, of which Kirsten is one, expect promises to be kept. It is the basic way of functioning organisations. The recent history of the Pakistan cricket clown car should have served as appropriate warning that, lamentably, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) does not belong in such a category.

The freak Test-series win against England, while a cause for elation, should not blind us to the mismanagement at the heart of Pakistan cricket. It needs to be fixed

Who can forget a few years ago, when Misbah was tasked with deciding what to do with Mickey Arthur? It was a process that memorably culminated in Mickey dismissed, as well as, lo and behold, Misbah in a joint coach/selector role.

Last year, it was the same dance but different dancers, Mohammad Hafeez nudging the Grant Bradburn/Mickey Arthur combo aside and taking their place, despite a vast gulf in coaching qualifications between the two.

And now, it’s Aqib and Kirsten. Tomorrow, Jason Gillespie?

There is a clear pattern here. In each case, a chairman becomes beholden to a whisperer who is deemed all-knowing, a “strategic” mind, and/or a “thinking cricketer.” From Misbah’s tactical genius, to Hafeez’s “professor” persona (one that is largely self-cultivated, but I digress), to Aqib’s image as the architect of Lahore’s Pakistan Super League successes, these men take on a consigliere role to a particular PCB boss, owing to a perceived belief in their cricketing smarts.

In step two, this local cricketing savant outmanoeuvres a highly acclaimed foreign coach, who may have all the qualifications and certificates and experience across international and franchise cricket one would want, but who nonetheless is haplessly outgunned when it comes to navigating backroom politics in Pakistan. There is no coaching workshop on this planet that can prepare anyone for that, unfortunately.

Step three is the culling, usually accompanied by a terse press release from the PCB, alongside a dirty media campaign by the PCB’s lifafa friends as a final token of gratitude.

Rinse and repeat. So here we are again.

There are almost no informed observers who do not consider the present era, stretching from the end of the 2021 T20 World Cup to the present, the worst in our history. The case is an easy one, considering both off-field drama and on-the-field results across formats.

Yes, the England series was genuinely great and cause for elation. The comeback was a badly-needed fillip. Sometimes, you just need a win, and we got one. But the reality is that such on-field results will remain a one-off in this era of such gross mismanagement.

Losing to the USA in the T20 World Cup in the summer or being whitewashed by Bangladesh at home — not for nothing, but had we won that series 2-0, we’d be a strong favourite for the WTC final right now — it is those results that reflect on our administration much more than the England series, which was quite random and freakish.

The fact remains that, as long as prime ministers and presidents have the power to change PCB chairs on a whim, we can expect more of the same. Because cricket is such a huge facet of social life in the country, it remains an easy target for politicians and generals. Forget reforming the tax collections, addressing climate change or dealing with the Taliban, the logic goes, when I could simply install a friend or confidante as PCB head as a reward for other favours?

As a consequence, every leader of this country, elected or otherwise, uses the PCB to further their own political goals. When they appoint a chairman they are close to, whether Imran Khan and Ramiz, the Sharifs and Najam Sethi, Zardari and Zaka, or now the faujis and Mohsin Naqvi, the incoming chairman wishes to reward the faith shown in them by making a splash. Every one of them enters the role with fanciful, grandiose and plain old idiotic ideas that they think will remake or renew Pakistan cricket.

Rules and formats for domestic cricket are changed at the drop of a hat, most recently seen in the case of Naqvi’s Champions Cup and restructuring of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy (just for kicks, try to imagine the ECB or CA making wholesale changes to county or state cricket every year or even every five years). New ventures are introduced (does anyone remember Ramiz’s vanity project, the PJL?). Captains are fired and new ones appointed, thus sowing dressing-room division (between them, Ramiz, Najam Sethi, Zaka and Naqvi have done more to divide Babar and Shaheen than the two principals themselves). Pitches are torn up and re-laid (again, thanks Ramiz!).

It is a maddening and frankly insane cycle to be a part of. The Pakistan fan has no escape from it, akin to a character in a horror movie trapped in a cage, slowly going crazier and crazier until their inevitable and gruesome demise. In a one-sport country of 250 million, the sad part is that, up to a point, the PCB can carry on screwing up and still count on lots and lots of people signing up for this long-running act of collective masochism.

But only up to a point.

These men — these incredibly flawed and delusional and silly men — should remember that nothing is guaranteed. No one from the Caribbean in the 1970s and 1980s could have imagined the state of West Indies cricket in the 21st century. No one involved in Pakistan hockey in the 1980s or even 1990s could have foreseen how far we would drop off the radar in that sport. Let us not be complacent.

Even with the greatest of head starts and every structural advantage possible, it is still possible for cricket to die in Pakistan. Cricket needs to be taken care of. Fans need to be taken care of. Players — their bodies and minds and wallets — need to be taken care of.

In the short term, put a professional who knows the game in charge of the PCB (Bazid Khan or Urooj Mumtaz would be great, by the way). In the medium term, sever its ties to political leaders. Please, let’s properly manage one of the very few things in the world Pakistan is globally competitive in.

The writer is an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in the US. X: @ahsanib

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 10th, 2024