Life would be flat without dreams: Tendulkar
In an extract from his exclusive interview with Donald McRae, Indian cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar stresses that rather than considering
retirement at the age of 37, he has many more goals to fulfil
Sachin Tendulkar, who made history earlier this month by becoming the first batsman to score 14,000 runs in Test cricket, has stressed that his desire to improve remains as intense as it has ever been. In a rare interview, to be published in full in Saturday’s newspaper, Tendulkar says: "I’m really focusing now on how I can get to the next level as a batsman. How can I get even more competitive? How can I get even more consistent? How can I get better?"

Pakistan’s performance graph has been alarmingly down in both Test and One-day International cricket for quite some time. But for the majority of their fans, the fact that Pakistan emerged as the most successful team in the Twenty20 format in the last four years was a big consolation.

Not any more! Pakistan have crashed to big defeats in their last four Twenty20 Internationals – two against England in Cardiff last month and the other couple of defeats came at the hands of South Africa in Abu Dhabi more recently.

His team’s dismal performance in Twenty20 matches forced Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi to confess that his is not a good team when it comes to the shortest format of the game.

"We have a good one-day team at the moment but I can’t say the same about our Twenty20 line-up. It’s a pretty ordinary team as it doesn’t have many Twenty20 specialists," Afridi told ‘The News on Sunday’ after his team suffered a 2-0 defeat in the series against South Africa.

It’s a surprising statement considering the fact that till 2009, Pakistan were officially the best Twenty20 team in the world. With the best success ratio and the ICC World Twenty20 title under their belt, Pakistan were brimming with some exciting talent. With Shahid Afridi –

the most successful Twenty20 all-rounder and pacer Umar Gul in the line-up, the Greenshirts seemed to have the best talent for the slam-bang version of cricket.

So what has happened to our Twenty20 squad? The biggest problem, according to some insiders, is that the national selectors have failed to identify the players who are best suited to the Twenty20 format. With an eye on World Cup 2011 – which begins next February – the selectors have been picking players on the basis of their one-day and even Test credentials. Their decision to put faith in such players has affected the Twenty20 line-up.

It has also created a rift within Pakistan cricket. All is certainly not well in the Pakistan camp as one keeps hearing complaints from someone or the other that a power tussle is having an adverse affect on the team’s performance.

The way Pakistan succumbed against South Africa in back-to-back Twenty20 games in Abu Dhabi is a clear proof that the team is far from a well-oiled, well-drilled unit that can go on and make its presence felt in the World Cup.

The clock is ticking.

Pakistan will have to work overtime and put their under-achieving team back on track ahead of the World Cup to be played in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. They have a series of One-day Internationals – against the Proteas in the United Arab Emirates and against the Blackcaps in

New Zealand – before the World Cup and will have to make good use of those games. Too many losses in the lead up to the World Cup will only put more pressure on a team that is dogged by scandals and internal rifts.

Pakistan’s cricket chiefs have chosen Afridi to lead Pakistan in the World Cup. They will have to show more faith in his leadership abilities and put an end to the speculations surrounding his captaincy. The morning after Pakistan lost their opening Twenty20 game in Abu Dhabi, rumours started circulating in national cricket circles that the Pakistan Cricket Board has decided to install senior batsman Misbah-ul-Haq as the new one-day captain. Such uncertainty might further lower the team’s morale.

The PCB will have to take a final decision about the team captain for the World Cup and then stick to it.

The selectors, too, should follow suit. The World Cup is just about 15 weeks away and there is no time for any more experimentation. They should be clear about the 15 men that will be representing Pakistan in the quadrennial spectacle.

At this point in time, Pakistan cricket needs a few shots in the arm. It will receive a big boost if the national team excels at the World Cup unlike in the previous two editions in 2003 and 2007 when it flopped miserably.

Unfortunately, signs are not good. Our selectors look confused, our cricket chiefs continue to repeat the same mistakes while the players are failing to live up to expectations. It feels like déjà vu all over again.

Khalid Hussain is Editor Sports of The News, Karachi

khalidhraj@gmail.com

Pakistan Cricket has been living on a borrowed time, the management and the players aren’t just more than doppelgangers; a spitting image. The people appointed to help Ijaz Butt’s administration plot its operational policy are in the right place at the wrong time: their ineptness and intellectual dishonesty have combined doing much damage, and the situation now looks irreparable, and they have acted as forces not working in Pakistan Cricket’s favour.

In fact, the trust deficit between the ICC, rest of the full-members and the Pakistan Cricket Board hasn’t proven well for our game, not giving us the space, opportunity and the political leverage, to do something dramatic; dramatic is a word alien to Ijaz Butt, drama and other such sequels his reality. If he could bring his presence to a more reasonable level, from a reviled clumsy and erratic representative of the PCB in international forums to a more acceptable place, Pakistan cricket still could erase more than half of the deficit. Will he ever going to do it?

Pakistan isn’t a team, a collection of players trudging on mediocrity, and their alleged corrupted activities exploited country’s face. Any of them seemingly haven’t signed up jobs out of a deep inner urge to balance the equation. From Ijaz Butt on down, it seems that they have been in Lahore with a very different set of purpose, reflected in their bad decisions, averse to rationality. They all together are shame to Pakistan Cricket. Nothing has emerged from the pack.

That the trust deficit is not sustainable in the long run is clear. ICC has now become terse and ham-fisted, calling ‘enough is enough’. And horrendously Pakistan cricket isn’t growing so that their alienation worldwide could be manipulated; with a growing trust deficit, PCB has now been cornered, expected to pay higher price, and Ijaz Butt to President Asif Ali Zardari is indispensible, seemingly his being a case of an altered ego.

Hitherto, Butt has been feeble-minded about his handling of the blight. He has overestimated ICC’s patience and grossly underestimated their apathy, proliferating junk in a hope that the deafening status quo and compulsive restrain of world’s governing body could help climb his way of the morass in which he has left Pakistan Cricket, imagining pulling himself, not country’s interest back from the brink, at no apparent cost to anyone! Pakistan cricket paid a huge price, its pride shorn into pieces and the shreds fully reflective of his incompetence.

Butt didn’t realise that without method and vision, the PCB couldn’t set aside reserves commensurate with the new risks that he needed to undertake, and his shameless repetitive stupidities reflected the higher probability of default; probability soon turned into reality, his blithe seeming indifference to the impact on Pakistan Cricket undermines his claims to affably retaining the directorship of the ICC. Butt must have known the power of the ICC. His defaults have also led to a weakening base of the Pakistani cricket system, and thus to a weakening future as well. Butt has been so unwanted in international space that he has not only reduced but eroded the likelihood of another bailout in the months to follow. His tenure has been filled with darker consequences, one that few people still foresee, as Pakistan cricket with Butt present as their Chairman works to get their balance back in order and conform to the new approach of the ICC, they are seen cutting their own Adam apples.

Now just pleasing the ICC means, of course, putting aside much of the development agenda that could have motivated a step in the right direction plus he has been completely apathetic putting aside qualms about whether the strategy would work: as I say, Butt’s continuation would eliminate possibilities of recovery and intensify Pakistan Cricket’s unemployment in the international space. Presently, Butt slithering into distress has gone on his knees in front of the ICC to backload his vote bank there, and as he is shambolic as he could be, the kneeling down would lead to even larger trust deficit.

It seems to be a risky policy, not for Butt’s survival but trying to avoid extermination of Pakistan’s cricket power, even in the future when the hostility in our environment mellows down. Seemingly under the pressure of politics and time, Butt’s regime has only added to the spoils. Cricket just couldn’t be in strong enough shape to withstand the impact. If the standard interpretation of history prevails, the answer appears to be yes. Butt’s overaggressive management though all shots in the dark has led to deceptive information, faulty decisions, and serious consequences for the Pakistani game. The PCB is being forced to continue setting aside growth, preserving survival in order to protect the integrity of international cricket against the risk of a drop of its gentlemanliness in the wake of spot fixing allegations on three Pakistan cricketers and at least one player from India; they aren’t and they aren’t going to be.

Butt could have testified lacking a core of established people apt enough to hold Pakistan Cricket together in testing times. Butt has had profound issues to sort out. He should also have known that corrupt or chaotic management promoted weak institutions. And Butt, fortunately for him and complete disaster for Pakistan’s game has stumbled back into the hands of a Patron not reluctant to accept him despite a sequence of disasters. With Butt in the Pakistani management, country’s cricket has been caught with snouts in the trough. Governance has been poor and Butt not at any level is a thinking philosopher. He has lacked the single-mindedness needed to tackle corruption in his ranks.

To the contrary he has tried to ignore it. Nor is it any use pointing a finger at the ICC. He needed to join the ICC to tackle the malaise with common intent, his was just a meekly response to their action; his wasn’t even a reaction; just a timid acceptance. Even at the ICC level match-fixing has been condemned by word but not by deed. Butt hasn’t even counted the cards in the pack, just blowing the sirens in all the wrong directions and confirming Australian claims of his buffoonery. The reasons for him being retained at Chairman PCB are just lame. Admittedly incompetent are clever. Butt’s governance has just been a charade. Pakistan Cricket, as it seems has been betrayed by one Ijaz Butt and the other, the appointing authorities. He needs to be drummed out as Pakistan Cricket isn’t a monastery. It’s time the Pakistani game should be rescued from the worst and given back the sanity, if not the best.

All conscious people, their thoughts and actions, are part reality. This fact, that our thinking forms part of what we think about has far reaching implications both for our thinking and for reality. It sets some insuperable obstacles to understanding reality and it also renders reality different from what we understand it to be.

naumanniaz@hotmail.com

To say that Pakistan hockey is facing a major slump would be an understatement. A country that has won a record four World Cup titles crashed to a humiliating last-place finish in this year’s World Cup in New Delhi. A country which dominated world hockey for several decades ended up at a dismal sixth position in this month’s Commonwealth Games which did not even feature top teams like Germany, Holland, Spain, Korea and Argentina.

Because of the team’s poor track record in 2010, not many believe that Pakistan can bounce back in next month’s Asian Games in Guangzhou, China.

Former Pakistan hockey legends feel that young blood should be induced in the team in order to build a strong national side which is capable of reviving Pakistan hockey’s lost glory.

Former hockey star Samiullah is of the view that young players always have a passion to achieve and make their place in the team.

"This ambitiousness by the individual players certainly helps in lifting the overall performance of the team. However, this may also result in individualism, but there comes the role of the coach and the team management to conform the players with the team-spirit benchmark," Pakistan’s former skipper Samiullah told ‘The News on Sunday’ in an interview.

"The hunger of individual players, when matched up with the requirement of the team, forms a lethal combination. The individual player and the team have one common goal — victory. Better performance by the united team would certainly be the individual achievement as well," he added.

Samiullah criticised Pakistan Hockey Federation for recalling senior players who have reached the twilight of their careers.

"It would not help in lifting Pakistan hockey, it would only frustrate the youngsters thriving to make their presence felt to the selectors. Those players who have failed in World Cup and Commonwealth Games would not be able to pull worthwhile achievements at Asian Games, which is obvious," he said.

Samiullah said that the young players should be motivated and a sense must be created among them that if they performs extraordinarily, no one can stop them from representing the national team.

"However, by dragging the players who are well off their peaks would only frustrate and waste the young talented players. It is now time that young players should replace them."

"The young talent should be realised and should be given a chance. It is now their time to represent the country. By dragging the senior players, who have lost their gloss, would only discourage our youth," Samiullah explained.

He said that many talented players are losing their peak time and when they would be getting a chance to represent the national side, they would immediately join county hockey abroad, whenever they would get a chance.

Pakistan’s FIH Grade-I coach and a former Olympian Qamar Ibrahim also said that the federation must take the challenge and induce young players in the team.

"I thought that Hanif Khan (Pakistan Hockey team coach) would bring some change in the team by bringing in the young players and sacking the senior who doesn’t have much left in them to give to the national team. However, by selecting the same senior players who failed in World Cup and Commonwealth Games shows that he also has now become the PHF like ad-hoc style strategist," Qamar said.

Qamar further said, "I hope that the team does well in Asian Games but the record of the team shows that they would find Korea, India and China difficult to overpower. And if the team fails in China, they would make the seniors scapegoat for that failure.

"So, it would be a win-win situation for the top brass of the federation as if the team do well, they would say ‘it was we who put faith in the senior players, and if the team fails, federation would say ‘it was seniors who let us down’. But this would not help lift hockey. They may save their face this way but I remind them that they are not doing justice to the national game," he said.

He said that there should be a proper way to show the senior players a dignified way out of their international careers.

Qamar said that by including young players in the team might not change the Asian Games result, but it would certainly predict a flourished team in times to come.

Meanwhile, another Pakistan’s legendary skipper Islahuddin Siddiqui said that Asian Games is a very important assignment and a gold medal should be the top priority of the federation.

"The need of the team is that, they go with full strength in the important event. The best players, who could pull worthwhile achievement in the Games should be a part of the team, though it be senior or junior players," Islah said.

However, the experienced hockey analyst said that the form and fitness should be the top priority for the selection of the team for the Asian Games.

"Every player, who would be going in the Asian Games should be highly fit. If the senior players are fit and in good form; they should be in the team. But if they are not fit, then junior player should be given a chance," he added.

He concluded that when there should be a choice to make between a junior and senior player, when they are assessed to be equally in form, fitness and skills then a junior player should be given a preference as at the end of the day, they normally have a bigger haul.

bilalsports86@yahoo.com