Ringside View: An end to 'player power'?

So it is final. After weeks of uncertainty, speculation and an atmosphere full of cloak and dagger stuff, Wasim Akram would after all not be leading the Pakistan team in what would have been his third successive World Cup campaign. Unlike 1995 and 1998, this time round his attempt at overthrowing the incumbent captain and commandeering the position for himself by hook or crook around the time of cricket's global showpiece has finally come to naught.

Newspaper reports have us believe that while Younis is elated at getting a reprieve after months of anxiety, Akram is disappointed in the extreme. Both reactions are highly understandable. But the period of underhand tactics to secure captaincy had lasted far too long anyway. Though one is not sure whether it has come to a definitive end with the thwarting of Akram's latest attempt, but the fact is that a number of cricket bosses were guilty of repeatedly caving in to player power, and not just for the heck of it. In each instance, they gave in to the revolting gang either to save their skins or for securing their own 'little place in the sun', for they surmised that giving in to expediency would ensure victory. Their expectations remained unfulfilled to a very large extent.

Rameez Raja in 1995 was thus a victim of Akram's 'frozen shoulder' in the middle of a Test match that would have clinched the series against Sri Lanka. Akram got the captaincy not long after Pakistan lost the series, and thus commenced a streak of home losses which mostly continues unabated till now. In 1998, first Rashid Latif and then Aamer Sohail were pushed to the wall, though not without some considerable help from their own quarters. Both hit the sack one after the other, and again it was time for the Return of the Prodigal.

The results though were nowhere near as prodigious: Pakistan was shut out in the quarter-final at Bangalore in the 1996 World Cup, and in 1999 lost to Bangladesh in the league, and India and South Africa in the Super Sixes (the judicial inquiry regarding the losses was conducted at the ICC's prompting, though one has learnt on good authority that Justice Bhandari's clean bill of health has not been accepted by the world body) before reaching the final.

In the final, the Aussies not just won their second World Cup, in the process they annihilated Pakistan in a manner so convincing that nearly four years on, the greenshirts have yet to recover from the pasting.

To add insult to injury, in both instances the Board officials who had condoned or abetted Akram's installation as captain were sent packing after the event!

One doesn't know whether Lt Gen Tauqir Zia is aware of this rather interesting glimpse of our recent cricketing history, but either by design or by default, he has resisted the temptation to go the same route as his predecessors. This bucking the trend, if it is backed up by further signals that devious tactics will not prevail any more may turn out to be a defining moment in the history of Pakistan cricket.

Apparently, the PCB chairman was convinced that Waqar's powers and control were on the wane and that Akram was a better choice at the moment and thus was inclined to swap horses midstream. But what got his goat was Akram and Shoaib Akhtar sitting out crucial games in the five-match series against South Africa on the now well-worn out pretext of injuries, and the former prematurely gloating in an interview in Cape Town over the distinct possibility of his reinstallation as skipper.

Akram and Akhtar's absence in the series-deciding games, and under-performance of some other key players resulted in a 4-1 drubbing - so patently a manufactured result which was meant to get the captain. Quite obviously, this does not reflect the true potential of a full-strength Pakistan team, especially given the fact that it had beaten the Proteas by a staggering margin of 182 runs (a South Africa record) in the second one-dayer.

In that context, the PCB has to share its portion of blame for not sorting the issue out this way or that way sooner than it did. If it had, Pakistan may have escaped the ignominy of going down so heavily in the one-day part of the rubber. And in the bargain, a lame duck Younis would have avoided serious erosion in authority.

So while Younis has cause to celebrate - and why not, after all he has survived the stratagems of a past master - he has his work cut out for him. He has to remove the reservations about his handling the players on and off the field, re-establish his authority as captain, and weld the team into a unit again to prove his many detractors wrong. Given the recent atmosphere of doubt and acrimony, this by no means is going to be easy.

One can only hope the decisiveness shown by the Pakistan Board will carry and lend Waqar a hand to weld a team together at this critical stage, just before the World Cup.