For someone who broke the news of the death of then-Pakistan head coach Bob Woolmer in the middle of the 2007 ICC ODI World Cup, only to become a ‘suspect’ in the eyes of the global media in the same episode, veteran Pakistani cricket journalist Abdul Majid Bhatti’s life has been inextricably intertwined with the incredible highs and abysmal lows of his country’s cricketing journey.
In his four-decade-long career as a sports writer and commentator, Bhatti, 63, has witnessed ego clashes between Imran Khan and Javed Miandad, Pakistan’s two greatest cricket icons, and later, the rivalry between the two legendary Ws, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.
Their personal differences, though, never came in the way of Pakistan’s collective dream as all of them contributed to making Pakistan the most fascinating team to watch in the 1980s and 1990s.
But in recent years, Pakistan have rarely produced jaw-dropping performances. Once a factory of world-class talent, Pakistan now seem to be struggling to put together 11 decent players to be competitive in Test cricket.
In white-ball cricket, they can still give any top team a run for their money, but red-ball cricket has completely exposed their lack of depth.
For Bhatti, the recent England fiasco — when seven players were sent home and the head coach and the bowling coach were sacked in the middle of the Test series for poor performances — was an accident waiting to happen.
So why does Pakistan now find itself at the bottom of Test cricket’s ladder, having lost 11 of 14 matches abroad since 2023 and relying heavily on rank turners to win at home?
And why does a country that produced great cricketers such as Imran Khan, Hanif Mohammad, Fazal Mahmood, Wasim Akram, Javed Miandad, Zaheer Abbas, Abdul Qadir, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Waqar Younis, Mohammad Yousuf, Younis Khan, Saqlain Mushtaq, Saeed Anwar and Shoaib Akhtar, now struggle to develop a system to nurture young talent?
Bhatti says Pakistan never really had a solid support system for players even during its glory days, and yet they somehow clicked.
“Look at the talent Pakistan had those days. These were basically street cricketers. Imran Khan spotted people and brought them into the system. Javed Miandad saw Wasim Akram and he was brought in,” Bhatti told the Khaleej Times.
But the gems unearthed from the streets were eventually shaped in first-class cricket.
“They (Wasim and Waqar) had the advantage of playing English county cricket. When Wasim Akram first came, he perhaps did not even have proper spikes. But then he got a long-term contract in England’s county cricket. The same happened with Waqar Younis. Waqar got a contract with Glamorgan and, if I remember correctly, took around 100 wickets in one season,” he said.
“That is the big difference I see between that era and today’s cricket. In those days, players played four-day cricket, and that is where talent was polished.
“Today, that polishing process is missing because everything is being fast-tracked. You are selecting players for Test cricket based on performances in red-ball cricket, but they should actually be playing more red-ball cricket in the first place. Take Babar Azam. I don’t know the exact statistics, but when was the last time he played a first-class domestic match? Maybe he has played one recently, but generally they don’t play enough. They are saving their energy for the T20 franchise leagues.”
Lack of class players
At the press conference ahead of the third Test against England, skipper Babar said he was kept in the dark about the unprecedented changes in the middle of the series, leading to even speculation about dressing-room leaks and ego clashes in the team.
Bhatti says it’s not uncommon in Pakistan cricket for players to have issues with a teammate, but in the past those problems never became a hindrance to the team’s performance on the field.
“The difference between that time and now is that, whatever clashes they had among themselves, they were still exceptional players. And all those clashes happened outside the boundary; once they went in, they fought together as a team,” Bhatti said.
“That element is missing now. Everyone knows Imran and Miandad didn’t get along well. But it was Miandad who advised Imran to include a finger spinner for the Bangalore Test in 1987 because on that turning pitch, a finger spinner would be more impactful than Abdul Qadir, who was a wrist spinner.
“So Imran included Iqbal Qasim just before the toss and he bowled Pakistan to its first-ever Test series win in India. Despite the differences and ego clashes, even Imran, who was such a powerful man in Pakistan cricket, also listened to Miandad. But now the main thing is the lack of class players.”
The Woolmer tragedy
Ironically, Pakistan had several world-class players at the 2007 ICC World Cup in the West Indies, only to be knocked out of the group stages following a shock defeat to minnows Ireland.
What followed was a dramatic turn of events as the team’s head coach, Bob Woolmer, was found unconscious in the team hotel the next day before being declared dead.
Jamaican police initially said that they had launched a murder probe, leading to months of media speculation and intense debates before the authorities announced that Woolmer died of natural causes.
Bhatti remembered how he found himself embroiled in one of the biggest controversies in world cricket history.
“I was the first reporter in the world to break the story of Woolmer’s death. I broke it on Geo TV before the official announcement,” Bhatti recalled.
“There was CCTV footage in which Pakistani journalist Ehsan Qureshi and I were standing in the same hotel premises with Woolmer. It was two nights before the incident. But a global media giant called it the final moments of Woolmer’s life. And then there was a strange situation where an Indian television channel suggested that Ehsan and I were somehow involved.
“That was bizarre. There was absolutely no basis to it. My sister, who lives in the United States, called me. She asked, “Are you watching television?” I said, “No.” She said, “There is a discussion about you on television. They are saying that you killed him.” I couldn’t believe it.
“At the time, I was transmitting my reports to Geo. I had been doing transmissions for about six days. Then Geo called me. I explained the whole situation to them. It was an extraordinary experience. I had gone there as a journalist to cover Pakistan cricket, and suddenly I was being discussed on television in connection with a death that I had actually been the first reporter to break.”
Months after Woolmer’s tragic death and the team’s demoralising first-round exit at the 2007 ODI World Cup, the mercurial Pakistanis made a miraculous recovery.
They came tantalisingly close to winning the 2007 T20 World Cup final before losing to India in a nerve-racking finish.
Less than two years later, Pakistan were on cloud nine when they won the Twenty20 global showpiece in 2009, their greatest moment on the world stage after the unforgettable 1992 World Cup win.
But Bhatti says such comebacks in Pakistan cricket are now impossible to envisage.
The prime example of it, according to Bhatti, is the terminal decline of Babar Azam, who has not scored a Test hundred since 2022.
“Now if you look at someone like Babar, he has become a victim of his own stardom,” he said.
“You know Muhammad Yousuf was Pakistan’s batting coach. I used to hear him (in television interviews), along with one or two other foreign batting consultants, saying that these players simply did not listen to advice.
“You know we saw the role Bob Woolmer played in Muhammad Yousuf’s career. He gave Yousuf so many hours of batting practice. These things matter.
“Javed Miandad also played a huge role in developing players. I remember Inzamam had trouble reading (Muttiah Muralitharan). So Miandad gave him throwdowns to help him prepare for Murali, asking him to play in the extra-cover.
“Later, Inzamam admitted that those practice sessions helped him play Murali better. That is what a good student does. Inzamam and Yousuf were already world-class batters; even then, they were willing to learn and improve.”
Now, for Pakistan to regain its mojo, a lot of changes need to be made.
“One important thing is the environment around the players. The constant changes don’t help. Captains are changed frequently, coaches are changed, selectors are changed and there are constant changes within the PCB,” Bhatti said.
“Even the domestic structure keeps changing. So in my opinion, you need to establish a proper system and then give that system time. Don’t keep changing it every year.”
It is simple advice from a man who has witnessed the magical highs of Imran, Miandad, Wasim and Waqar, and the abysmal lows of the 2007 ODI World Cup and the recent England debacle, where knee-jerk reactions to Test defeats left the cricketing world scratching its head.
Source: Khaleej Times