This thread is not intended to explore the deterioration in Pakistan's performances in every format compared with the Inzamam/Arthur era. Those results are a matter of record and do not require further analysis.
What I want to discuss is the elementary errors that Misbah and Waqar made in how they did their jobs, which made them so easy to remove. These are schoolboy errors that very few of us would make in our own jobs.
1. Stripping the team of players at their peak
This is a brave move for any Chief Selector.
Most people can see that players don't reach their peak until their early to mid-twenties, and pass it by the age of around 30.
Most self-respecting sports coaches will therefore stack the team with players aged 23-30. Misbah actually removed almost all players in that age group, and replaced them with grandpas or kids, with predictable results. By the second Test in Australia the bowling line-up took 3 wickets in the entire match.
2. Packing the team with veterans
The final Inzamam/Arthur Test side contained 3 players aged over 30 - Azhar Ali who was presumed to be playing his final Test, Asad Shafiq and Sarfraz Ahmed.
The first Misbah/Misbah Test side suddenly ran this number up to 7 players aged over 30 - in the very next Test.
Suddenly players who had been culled by Inzamam and Arthur were back. The transition from Yasir Shah to Shadab Khan was reversed (after Shadab took 4-80 and scored 5 and 47 not out in the previous Test).
But the players whom Misbah brought back were either has-beens or nobodies.
His four new older players were:
Haris Sohail (who scored less than 10 in every innings except one on tour).
Yasir Shah - who in 11 Tests after his recall took 32 wickets at an average of 46.06!
Iftikhar Ahmed
Imran Khan
Would you bet your career on people like this succeeding in Australia?
Meanwhile he persisted with Asad Shafiq until he recalled the same Fawad Alam whose playing place he had taken a decade earlier.
And then he selected Abid Ali.
And he kept picking Mohammad Abbas. Abbas played 11 Tests in the Misbah era, of which 5 were with his favoured Dukes Ball. But he took just 24 wickets in 11 Tests, at an average of 34.45, and with a disastrous strike rate of 87.4 That is not a misprint!
3. And kids!
Misbah precipitated the retirement of Mohammad Amir from Tests when he indicated that he would not honour Inzamam's agreement that he would play only Pink Ball and SENA Tests.
The bowling attack was already youthful due to the development of Shaheen Shah Afridi, but Misbah and Waqar then decided that what was required in Australia was two kids of very short height, in Naseem Shah and Musa Khan.
Mickey Arthur had already gained some kudos by bringing along Babar Azam (who had been blocked from the team Misbah captained), Shaheen, Shadab and Faheem, all of whom performed creditably in England and South Africa.
Misbah just needed to keep them in the team and bring in younger players one at a time - probably by grooming Naseem Shah and Rohail Nazir and calling up Saud Shakeel and Usman Salahuddin.
Instead he lost his mind completely, pairing Shaheen in Australia with Naseem Shah in one Test and Musa Khan in the other.
Picking dummy captains
We all know that by convention, an international cricket captain is the boss of the coach - the opposite of most other sports.
Misbah was well aware that he lacked the qualifications or credentials to coach even a district cricket team, let alone an international one. He needed to reinforce his power by his control over the skipper, or so he thought.
So Azhar Ali, whom Mickey Arthur had planned to release into retirement, not only stayed in the team, he became Misbah's puppet captain. In 27 innings in the Misbah Era he reached 50 just 5 times, and failed to reach 40 TWENTY TWO TIMES.
When Azhar had to be replaced - he was averaging 14.28 after four away Tests in the Misbah era as captain - there were three potential replacements. Shan Masood was more intelligent and more highly educated than Misbah, so that wasn't going to happen. Mohammad Rizwan is a tough, strong-minded individual, so that wasn't going to happen. But Babar Azam is semi-educated and has no leadership qualities, so he was the ideal man to appoint so that Misbah could still be in charge.
Alienating his players
In England in 2018 and in South Africa eight months later a new core had developed within the team. Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf and Shadab Khan - along with Mohammad Amir - were contributing significantly more than Azhar Ali, Asad Shafiq, Yasir Shah and Sarfraz Ahmed, and were essentially driving the team forward. But Misbah threw the new core of the team overboard, and ensured that a rift developed within the team which undermined his power and control.
He basically discarded four of his best five players to accommodate his cronies, and he never recovered from this political miscalculation. We saw his hostility towards Mohammad Amir, but we also heard the carefully leaked criticisms of the attitudes of Hasan Ali, Shadab Khan and Faheem Ashraf, and we all knew why they were happening. Nobody was fooled, and the players he needed the most resented him for his actions.
The final denouement
The results were predictable. Misbah had packed his team with extreme age in terms of both youth and old age. And he had also chosen weak on-field leadership to ensure that the captain would not use his rightful status to over-rule him.
Gradually a pattern emerged.
On tour in Australia, then England, then finally New Zealand everyone could compare Misbah's team's performance with Arthur's a couple of years earlier.
And in every case, the Misbah team performed much worse than the Arthur one that preceded it.
Fans and employers will generally tolerate a bad run if things are improving and if you have made a generational change by phasing out veterans in favour of a younger generation.
But Misbah had done the opposite. He had replaced men in their twenties with a combination of men in their mid-thirties and boys. He had appointed weak skippers to consolidate his own power, and he had alienated four of the five players who had contributed the most on the field in the previous year.
He made himself so easy to sack. It's just extraordinary.
What I want to discuss is the elementary errors that Misbah and Waqar made in how they did their jobs, which made them so easy to remove. These are schoolboy errors that very few of us would make in our own jobs.
1. Stripping the team of players at their peak
This is a brave move for any Chief Selector.
Most people can see that players don't reach their peak until their early to mid-twenties, and pass it by the age of around 30.
Most self-respecting sports coaches will therefore stack the team with players aged 23-30. Misbah actually removed almost all players in that age group, and replaced them with grandpas or kids, with predictable results. By the second Test in Australia the bowling line-up took 3 wickets in the entire match.
2. Packing the team with veterans
The final Inzamam/Arthur Test side contained 3 players aged over 30 - Azhar Ali who was presumed to be playing his final Test, Asad Shafiq and Sarfraz Ahmed.
The first Misbah/Misbah Test side suddenly ran this number up to 7 players aged over 30 - in the very next Test.
Suddenly players who had been culled by Inzamam and Arthur were back. The transition from Yasir Shah to Shadab Khan was reversed (after Shadab took 4-80 and scored 5 and 47 not out in the previous Test).
But the players whom Misbah brought back were either has-beens or nobodies.
His four new older players were:
Haris Sohail (who scored less than 10 in every innings except one on tour).
Yasir Shah - who in 11 Tests after his recall took 32 wickets at an average of 46.06!
Iftikhar Ahmed
Imran Khan
Would you bet your career on people like this succeeding in Australia?
Meanwhile he persisted with Asad Shafiq until he recalled the same Fawad Alam whose playing place he had taken a decade earlier.
And then he selected Abid Ali.
And he kept picking Mohammad Abbas. Abbas played 11 Tests in the Misbah era, of which 5 were with his favoured Dukes Ball. But he took just 24 wickets in 11 Tests, at an average of 34.45, and with a disastrous strike rate of 87.4 That is not a misprint!
3. And kids!
Misbah precipitated the retirement of Mohammad Amir from Tests when he indicated that he would not honour Inzamam's agreement that he would play only Pink Ball and SENA Tests.
The bowling attack was already youthful due to the development of Shaheen Shah Afridi, but Misbah and Waqar then decided that what was required in Australia was two kids of very short height, in Naseem Shah and Musa Khan.
Mickey Arthur had already gained some kudos by bringing along Babar Azam (who had been blocked from the team Misbah captained), Shaheen, Shadab and Faheem, all of whom performed creditably in England and South Africa.
Misbah just needed to keep them in the team and bring in younger players one at a time - probably by grooming Naseem Shah and Rohail Nazir and calling up Saud Shakeel and Usman Salahuddin.
Instead he lost his mind completely, pairing Shaheen in Australia with Naseem Shah in one Test and Musa Khan in the other.
Picking dummy captains
We all know that by convention, an international cricket captain is the boss of the coach - the opposite of most other sports.
Misbah was well aware that he lacked the qualifications or credentials to coach even a district cricket team, let alone an international one. He needed to reinforce his power by his control over the skipper, or so he thought.
So Azhar Ali, whom Mickey Arthur had planned to release into retirement, not only stayed in the team, he became Misbah's puppet captain. In 27 innings in the Misbah Era he reached 50 just 5 times, and failed to reach 40 TWENTY TWO TIMES.
When Azhar had to be replaced - he was averaging 14.28 after four away Tests in the Misbah era as captain - there were three potential replacements. Shan Masood was more intelligent and more highly educated than Misbah, so that wasn't going to happen. Mohammad Rizwan is a tough, strong-minded individual, so that wasn't going to happen. But Babar Azam is semi-educated and has no leadership qualities, so he was the ideal man to appoint so that Misbah could still be in charge.
Alienating his players
In England in 2018 and in South Africa eight months later a new core had developed within the team. Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf and Shadab Khan - along with Mohammad Amir - were contributing significantly more than Azhar Ali, Asad Shafiq, Yasir Shah and Sarfraz Ahmed, and were essentially driving the team forward. But Misbah threw the new core of the team overboard, and ensured that a rift developed within the team which undermined his power and control.
He basically discarded four of his best five players to accommodate his cronies, and he never recovered from this political miscalculation. We saw his hostility towards Mohammad Amir, but we also heard the carefully leaked criticisms of the attitudes of Hasan Ali, Shadab Khan and Faheem Ashraf, and we all knew why they were happening. Nobody was fooled, and the players he needed the most resented him for his actions.
The final denouement
The results were predictable. Misbah had packed his team with extreme age in terms of both youth and old age. And he had also chosen weak on-field leadership to ensure that the captain would not use his rightful status to over-rule him.
Gradually a pattern emerged.
On tour in Australia, then England, then finally New Zealand everyone could compare Misbah's team's performance with Arthur's a couple of years earlier.
And in every case, the Misbah team performed much worse than the Arthur one that preceded it.
Fans and employers will generally tolerate a bad run if things are improving and if you have made a generational change by phasing out veterans in favour of a younger generation.
But Misbah had done the opposite. He had replaced men in their twenties with a combination of men in their mid-thirties and boys. He had appointed weak skippers to consolidate his own power, and he had alienated four of the five players who had contributed the most on the field in the previous year.
He made himself so easy to sack. It's just extraordinary.
