What Trent Bridge brought in for the Pakistani team was a new realisation of the fact that the high of beating a world class team (Australia) -- a week before -- is not enough to get you past England on their home ground, you have to do some batting as well.

However, no matter how much appalling the defeat in Nottingham be, the theatrics, that followed, were more than what the worst critics of the team would have scribed down against the down trodden 'young side'.

Where to start from?

Letís begin with the backdrop of the post-Nottingham theatre.

PCB, after banning half the former captains of the team, asked Afridi to step up and take command.

But it was a bit too much for Afridi. He said his goodbyes to the longer format of the game after losing the series-opening Lord's Test against Australia and his stunning move once again underlined the incapable decision-making of the Board.

Although more was expected of Afridi simply because of the fact that he was one of the senior players in a relatively younger side.

But his departure made the plot more intriguing.

Pakistan, under yet another new captain -- sixth skipper in about two years -- Salman Butt, went on to achieve an impossible (at least for them) and beat Australia after 15 years.

All hopes that than were associated with Pakistan proved to be self-deception, as Pakistan self-exploded and went on for a 354-run drubbing at the hands of the English.

Reason!

Ignorance to take direction; as everyone appreciated the milestone of Aussie takeover, they also pointed out the fact that the team has a batting more fragile than a tissue which James Anderson tore apart in the first of the ongoing four-Test series against England. Pakistan fell to 80 all-out in their second innings, chasing a record total of 434.

Umar Gul was the guy who saved Pakistan blushes with a hard hitting 65 not out, to save the side from a follow-on in the first innings.

The defeat sparked a comedy of decision making blunders, recalling Mohammad Yousuf for the rest of the tour, axing Danish Kaneria ñ our country's top spinner.

Mohammad Yousuf, who quit the game after PCB's indefinite ban imposed on him over the debacle on the tour of Australia, has been recalled with Pakistanís batting going nowhere on seaming English tracks.

Contrarily, Younis Khan, currently playing County Championship in England, has still not caught the attention of the selectors and the touring team management.

Younis, like Yousuf, was also slapped with an indefinite ban against which he appealed and subsequently the ban was overturned. Giving the 35-year-old Yousuf, who has not featured in any competitive cricket for around five months, an SOS call and ignoring Younis, in action on English soil, is drastically biased and extremely illogical, to say the least.

That Yousuf was leading the team in Australia and was held responsible for disunity in the squad makes the boardís decision even more unjustified and distressing.

And his return may raise a big question mark on team unity. Shoaib Malik has termed him as a pathetic captain and it's a bit too early for Salman Butt to forget the verbal lashing that he got from the veteran after he was involved in his run out on the disastrous tour of Australia.

But this is all on stage; behind the scenes is a far uglier truth.

controversial selection for the England tour has turned some heads against the authority of the present selection committee headed by Mohsin Khan, the strings of which are seemed to be pulled by people sitting in other offices.

While announcing the Test squad for the England tour they discarded Younis and promising wicket-keeper Sarfraz Ahmed which exhibits major over writings in their script.

Younis could have been the required rock-solid addition to our fragile middle-order and Kamran's less than ordinary show behind the stumps called for a more solid back-up keeper but...

Furthermore, when off-spinner Saeed Ajmal is part of the team in England what is the point of calling a raw spinner?

Any way, since the board has put its trust in Salman, they will have to give him time to settle. It's too early to comment on his captaincy which is at its very tender stage. If you selected him as the leader, let him be for some time... please!

While leading in his first full-fledged series, it is time for him to establish himself as a true, unbiased front-man while making his willow speak at the same time. His charges also need to back him with individual brilliance and 'teamwork'. Otherwise, Pakistan will have to continue to bear an awful summer in England.

And our selectors will keep going for experience and after, God forbid, another loss may recall Javed Miandad or better yet can tell the legendary Zaheer Abbas to pad up.

And before you pull down the curtain, there has not been any visible effort by the PCB hierarchy to initiate the process of reviving international cricket in Pakistan after last yearís terror incident that rattled the touring Sri Lankan team in Lahore.

According to recent media reports, the ICC has not received the security report from the PCB over the unfortunate incident, indicating lukewarm interest by the local authorities in making progress on this highly contentious issue.

And as for the English fans they are getting two for their money, their team is continuing their awesome buildup for Ashes and yes the PCB theatre is in town as well.

aafarshori@hotmail.com

Pakistan sulking to disgrace at Nottingham was equally reprehensible. Ijaz Butt, PCB chairman had audaciously acknowledged that the win at Headingley against Australia was expectedly to be the turnaround in the Pakistani game and there wasn't any place for the old and experienced players. He intended to reinvent the wheel.

He had to retract his words? As Pakistan skittled to 80 all out at Trent Bridge, Mohammad Yousuf was already on the plane to use his magic wand at Edgbaston. Why Younis Khan, already employed with Surrey wasn't requested to reinforce the team (team if it ever is) unambiguously implied that Yawar Saeed, the 76-year-old manager now walking with a stick and still in the thick of the action has developed aversion to the ex-Pakistan captain. And Yawar is the meanest influence on Butt, it requires no citation; it is just a brutal naked truth.

Initially critiques anticipated a change and eagerly waited for Ijaz Butt to be removed but assuredly they exhausted their expectancy to see shameless degeneration of the Pakistani game and still they could only view apathy in the corridors of power in Islamabad; that further emboldened Butt regretfully to continue his decaying governance, rhythmically in a thrall of power-abuse; Pakistan cricket is dead, a result of irrational exuberance, the runaway tactics amplified by the imprudent decision making. Why did Pakistan lose at Nottingham, I do not have to divulge details as ex-cricketers including Aamir Sohail, quite enterprisingly delineated the reasons; but what is the philosophy of this self-infliction and the collective degradation interests me?

The President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari requires freezing redemptions to prevent the national pride being mutilated each day with the senile stuck-ups at the PCB withdrawing senility? Pakistan cricket now finds itself in the same unfortunate position as many other games locked into unlisted disgrace with no way out. It is still hoped that reinstating Pakistan cricket as a product and above all a tool for national pride is remotely possible only if Butt is not removed but routed out of the system?

Pakistan cricket's crunch and volatility shouldn't be blamed, enough of the scapegoats and enough of rankling justifications and lousy back-up stories from Ijaz Butt, Yawar Saeed and a long list of their lame employees? Mr Zardari needs to step in to off-load Butt's regime, the quicker he does it, the better it would be for the team, and cricket as part of country's culture, as it was rather than sell once Pakistan's premier product into a weak market at fire-sale prices. Prudent strategies, stopping outflows of disparagement could only be installed by responsible managers to protect underlying lack of value and disintegration of the national team; what Butt is doing is panic selling? Mohammad Yousuf -- a failed captain; Mohammad Yousuf banned for life; Mohammad Yousuf dropped from the team for an indefinite period; Mohammad Yousuf retired; Mohammad Yousuf not chosen on the Pakistan team touring England; Mr. Butt not needing old players to be part of the team; and now Mohammad Yousuf requested to be part of the team for Test two of the series at Edgbaston?

Pakistan cricket is being led with recklessness, without a vision, without a plan, on knee-jerk responses and impulsive decisions; quite a few know that whilst Shoaib Malik was the captain and Salman Butt his apprentice, both players were not only cynical but also critical of Yousuf and now the bearded batsman would be endevaouring to serve one of his perennial detractors? How could team spirit evolve in such a hostile environment? Pakistan cricket is only characterised by bad news and incessant stupidity. This is very unfortunate and there seems no access to sanity amidst madness, locked in for the foreseeable future that will most likely look on helplessly as the PCB regime gets whittled away by ongoing state of shambles and falling grace. Ironically, amidst this cataclysm, meanwhile Chairman PCB and his most incapable reservoirs of inept men are still able to rest assured in the knowledge that their jobs are safe, and must be telling themselves that they are really helping Pakistan cricket to grow out of a whirl that they had created themselves; they have done all the things rash trying to cash out in a weak market.

The reputation of the Pakistan Cricket Board and its team has certainly taken a hammering as Mohammad Yousuf has been asked to rush to rescue preempting an extraordinary bail out, a bailout that will end up being born squarely on his shoulders; a ludicrous contemplation, indeed! The 170 Million Pakistanis watch incredulously as the self-proclaimed beacon of cricket management embark on what almost looks like a wave of disintegration, mass destruction and thorough ruination of the game; they must have made many a fascist proud. How long we have strive desperately to put together a plan to take over more ill-liquid and toxic debt from incapable management teams, the struggling PCB spilt all over the drawing board. In Pakistan raw talent is dead and if scientific development modules are not introduced, we'll keep on running this large vulture and on the acquisition trail rather than evolve premier product for the global market.

Butt's regime should be tagged as 'The Price of Greed, Incapacity & Thoughtlessness'. How could he trigger a mighty fall and brought national pride around the country down with it is a mystery in itself? It boils down to a whole lot of greed and arrogance. Meanwhile lame-duck Chairman of the PCB devotes a minute in England and a minute there in televised sound-bites on cricket crises as he tries to calm the Pakistani jitters. The absence of high-pedigreed and apt leadership, Butt's role has been a notch or two of a doorman at the stadium gates -- for getting Pakistan cricket out of its recurrent mess. And why the Patron of the PCB seems to be keeping a low profile allowing Ijaz Butt to claim centre-stage of destruction? Australia might have been too big to fail, but at the very least it seems Pakistan is certain to lose its status of a cricket playing nation as England and Sri Lanka remerge in the new world order.

Irony is that fears of moral hazards have been abandoned amid the non-existent rescue efforts. This is not how Pakistan cricket is supposed to work? It is hard to rate the worst of the sins: the avarice of Pakistani people and their expectations, a sporadic bubble of existence, the pride of risk taking critiques, or the sloth of Ijaz Butt and his regime who have failed to identify and act to prevent the looming disaster; reality check delineates that the disaster isn't looming, it has already wiped off any hope aground? Amidst disaster Ijaz Butt does not know what he is doingÖhe did not know what he was talking aboutÖhas no clues and no answers to the existing situation. His endless blunders have triggered unintended consequences, resulting in the death spiral of Pakistan cricket's moral values and aesthetics eerily similar to the rush to devastation.

The ongoing torrential rains across the country have left thousands of our countrymen homeless with many losing their lives and lives of their loved ones. This reminds me of the Sri Lankan tsunami where millions lost their lives because they were naive swimmers. Swimming is a natural act and experiments have shown that even newborn babies swim if left free in water. Realising the importance of this basic skill, the Sri Lankan government launched a national programme of swimming for the people living along the coastal belt of the country so that the loss of precious lives can be minimised in any such future eventuality.

Swimming in turbulent open water is a challenging task, however we are unaware of the fact that open water swimming is now a part of the Olympic games, and race of over 10km was contested for the first time at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Archaeologists know that humans developed watercraft 40,000 years ago and Romans built the first swimming pools. However, they were very small in size and the first-ever recorded swimming champion in the history, Cicero complained that he needed a wider pool to avoid hurting his hands against the wall.

More surprisingly history shows that Pakistan is the birthplace of the first proper swimming pool in the world which was 39 feet long and 23 feet wide in Mohenjo-Daro, which served a religious function through a form of synchronised swimming.

In spite of the stunning fact that Pakistan is the birthplace of synchronised swimming, one hardly finds appropriate public swimming pools in the country, where scientific training can be imparted to the young swimmers under the watchful eyes of trained coaches.

Back in time, to the dawn of history, primitive people used the dog paddle, a stroke that naturally involves the principle of continuous propulsion. Around 17th century, European swimmers started to copy the swimming movement of the frog, and from this came the stop start action of the breaststroke, the first formal type of swimming in Western culture.

The art of swimming passed through a long curve of evolution. The North American Indians, Australians, Japanese and the British contributed immensely in the development of different swimming strokes and styles. However the development of the crawl-stroke revolutionised swimming in the year 1900. The Japanese improved upon the basic crawl and introduced a method that eminently suited to their shorter stature, flexible bodies and short arms.

Harry Hebner who made his international debut in 1908 as a 17-year-old member of Olympic team invented the backstroke but it was Adolph Kiefer, a Chicago school boy who in 1953 swam 100-metre backstroke in 57.6 seconds with an improved style that was later popularised as "Kiefer style".

The credit of developing the breaststroke goes to Frank Sachs in 1912 and Henry Myers of the Brooklyn Dragon swim club is generally credited with developing the butterfly stroke in 1933 but he had to wait till 1956 Melbourne Olympics, when butterfly was finally included as a separate swimming event.

Pakistan has had its problems with organised swimming because it requires state of the art swimming pools.

But what happened in Serpentine River in August 1838 with the support of National Swimming Society provides a ray of hope to our pathetic swimming system, as it was the beginning of organised open water swimming that does not require the facility of swimming pool.

In the beginning of 19th century, the public swimming pools as we know them today did not exist. Many of the leading schools in England encouraged their pupils to learn to swim. Races in a nearby river, canal or pond became part of the school sports curriculum. The industrial revolution in Europe turned the trends and fast growing population caused great congestion and early century epidemics of cholera with heavy mortality often swept through cities and towns.

In 1834, barrister Edwin Chadwick emphasised the provision of increased water supplies and improved sanitation. In 1842, the British Swimming Society presented a petition signed by 322 persons in favor of bathing spaces. The petition stated that over 2,000 people drowned annually, 350 in London alone, mainly attributable to the neglect of the art of swimming.

How many people drown in Pakistan every year in the flooding season, because they don't know how to swim is a question that remains unanswered because of non availability of authentic data. This year, according to Red Cross, an estimated 1600 people have drowned and 2.5 million have been affected due to inundation of thousands of villages. Yet swimming in canals, rivers and open sea can be witnessed at many places in the country.

Open water swimming is very different and challenging from swimming in a pool. Long distance open water swimming requires extraordinary physical and mental toughness. Very few sports are as precise as swimming. Cyclists can blame the wind, runners the terrain and team sports the referee. Swimming, on the other hand, has exact distances and water is, well, constant.

Pakistan may be short of public swimming pools but there is no dearth of open swimming spaces, starting from Attaabad Lake in North where peripheral nerve conduction may fall below 15ms for every ten degree centigrade, and muscle power output falls 3 per cent for every one degree centigrade fall in muscle temperature, thus reinforcing the need for maintenance of power output to reduce the deleterious impact of extreme cold on performance, to the extents of cozy warm waters of vast Indian Ocean, largest canal system of the world and sufficient rivers.

Mr Cornel Marculescus the Executive Director of FINA in Switzerland recognizes Mr Kamran Lashari and panel of his office bearers as the bona-fide Pakistan Swimming Federation (PSF).

I am sure that Pakistan has ample of swimming talent amongst both males and females. In spite of the shortage of public swimming pools and clean chlorinated water, if given an opportunity and properly organised by PSF, there is no reason why future swimming champions can't be produced in the category of open swimming and may precious lives can be saved from drowning in future monsoon floods in the country.