"I expected to continue as Pakistan Head Coach as that had been communicated to me" : Mickey Arthur
Mickey Arthur took on the role of Pakistan Head Coach in May 2016 and proceeded to take his side to a drawn Test series against England, and subsequently saw his side become the top-ranked Test and T20I side. The undoubted highlight of his tenure came in 2017 when against all odds, his side became the winners of the Champions Trophy after defeating India in the final.
In a recent interview I did with him for Wisden, Arthur who is currently Head Coach of Sri Lanka, spoke about the highs and lows of his tenure with Pakistan, the pressure on Misbah-ul-Haq as he juggles the roles of Head Coach and Chief Selector for Pakistan, why it’s too late for Umar Akmal to establish himself in international cricket, Babar Azam's ability to handle the pressure of being T20I captain and Pakistan’s leading batsman and also the impression that Pakistan's 2019 World Cup was a failure.
PakPassion.net: What will be the memories of your role as Pakistan Head Coach?
Mickey Arthur: It’s difficult to describe the whole experience but suffice to say that working and living in Pakistan brought about a whole myriad of emotions. I loved every minute of coaching Pakistan, from the minute I set foot in Pakistan to the minute it all ended. I really enjoyed each and every moment of my time there. I loved the players and the way they embraced what I wanted and asked them to do and I thought that they became a lot more professional during my tenure. I really admired what the culture stood for in Pakistan and then there were the fans and the people who I will never forget.
I still get stopped in the streets by Pakistan fans who thank me for my time. In fact, I can go anywhere in the world and there will always be a Pakistan fan who will stop and greet me and thank me. The people are wonderful and even though we couldn’t play any cricket in Pakistan during my time as coach, the support we got everywhere was just truly unbelievable. My overriding memory and one that encapsulates the sort of support Pakistan has was when we beat New Zealand at Edgbaston in the 2019 World Cup. The memories of those moments with a sea of green and the flags and the sheer emotions, all those memories will stay with me forever.
PakPassion.net: How disappointed were you to have not been retained as Pakistan Head Coach?
Mickey Arthur: I was very disappointed as I expected to continue in the role as that had been communicated to me. So, I thought that was going to happen but unfortunately, it didn’t. But all good things come to an end, and Pakistan was a really good thing for me. And when one door closes, another door opens. This is what happened, I went back to Perth and set up a business which is doing well. And then Sri Lanka came calling and I am absolutely loving my time here in Colombo coaching the Sri Lankan team. It’s such an uncanny thing to note how similar it is to my time in Pakistan and I am really enjoying it.
PakPassion.net: Chief Selector, Head Coach of Pakistan and Head Coach of a PSL side, that’s a lot of responsibility for Misbah-ul-Haq isn’t it?
Mickey Arthur: It is a lot of responsibility. Although in my time with Pakistan I didn’t have all those roles, but I did sit alongside Inzamam-ul-Haq and the selection panel and we had an unbelievable relationship. Having experienced the whole sequence and process of interacting with players and the selectors, I can say that it’s a hell of a lot of work. I don’t think people realise the magnitude of the whole job until you are in it. Your communication skills are tested to the hilt and that’s one thing you have to stay on top of, and you have to keep all the stakeholders informed all the time. So, for Misbah, communication is going to be the key to make it all work, but I am pretty sure he has it all under control.
PakPassion.net: Do you think Misbah-ul-Haq has the skills and capabilities to be successful in all three aforementioned roles?
Mickey Arthur: It is a lot to ask of any person but Misbah knows Pakistan cricket and he is well respected and to top it all, he is a very intelligent man. If there is anyone who could make it work in such a role, I feel that person would be Misbah-ul-Haq.
PakPassion.net: What were the best and toughest aspects of being Pakistan Head Coach?
Mickey Arthur: I loved the cricket side of my role. I loved putting the team together and the day-to-day interaction with the players. It was a pleasure watching how the players bought into what we were trying to do and how they got better and better at it. But the toughest part of the role and the one that wore me down the most was dealing with the Pakistani media. The constant putting out fires and dealing with the untruths that were reported and the stretching of the stories to suit people’s agendas was very tiring. With every untruth that gets reported, comes a whole sequence of events as the person who is the subject of this misinformation starts believing it and you need to pacify him and then start all over again to build trust and relationships. I found that the hardest aspect was the continual perseverance and intrusion of the media.
PakPassion.net: Television pictures painted a 1000 words whenever you were on screen. How stressful a role is being a Head Coach of a national cricket team?
Mickey Arthur: My actions as captured by TV cameras exactly summed up what was going through my head. There were times when I was jumping out of the seat with happiness. And there were times when I was throwing my cap to the ground because I just couldn’t believe that we had committed an error like that. One thing about me for all to see is that I wear my heart on my sleeve, so those emotions erupt instinctively. There is nothing fake, and it happens because I am so involved and passionate about every match. I just want all my teams to do so well so badly that those emotions just come out.
PakPassion.net: Did you get the feeling that some of the younger Pakistani players think they are better than what they actually are?
Mickey Arthur: I did not get that feeling from our younger players. I would like to think that myself and the support staff with the ideas, game plans and structures that we wanted for Pakistan cricket changed that way of thinking in the younger players. The younger guys and Sarfaraz Ahmed and Azhar Ali were all unbelievable human beings who never ever took playing for Pakistan for granted. They worked incredibly hard as that’s what the environment demanded, and they gave 100% every time they came for training. Every time they were in the dressing room they brought in positivity and energy and I never ever had any problem with any of the younger players. In fact, I admired their will to want to get better.
PakPassion.net: When you took on the role of Pakistan Head Coach, what did you uncover?
Mickey Arthur: I was dismayed when I came into the role to see what the general work ethic was like but I can honestly say that at the end of it, the work ethic of these young players was second to none and as good as any other international team in the world at the moment. Yes, fitness was one thing that you still need to drive and keep driving hard and I am glad Misbah-ul-Haq is doing that because that’s the one area that you need to keep on pushing. But when we talk about the skills of Pakistani cricketers, I can say without a doubt that they work and work hard on their skills all the time.
PakPassion.net: Umar Akmal has been a thorn in the side of many coaches. What are your thoughts on him?
Mickey Arthur: It’s definitely too late for him now. It’s sad because he is a likable enough bloke but what he needed was a real firm hand at the start of his career to guide him properly. I don’t think he got the right messages earlier in his career because if he had, he wouldn’t have gone down the route he has chosen to. He was frustrating to work with. He has all the talent in the world but has wasted it and unfortunately, he will now go down in history as one Pakistan player who has underachieved.
PakPassion.net: Any other players who you felt underachieved during your tenure as Head Coach of Pakistan?
Mickey Arthur: I’d like to think that we pushed the guys to almost become the best that they could be. I had one notable spat with Wahab Riaz, and we spoke openly about it as well. I felt that Wahab had so much ability and potential and at the point, we left him out of the side, he just wasn’t fulfilling his potential. I was really tough on him, but I was tough on him, for good reasons. That was because I cared, and I wanted him to be the best he could be. When Wahab did come back into the team, he came back fitter, stronger and faster and with a new focus. I just hope that he learnt that lesson and still has a lot in the tank because Wahab was the one who had unbelievable ability and should have been doing much more with that ability at the time I left him out.
PakPassion.net: What were the best moments of your time with the Pakistan side?
Mickey Arthur: The high points for me were every time we ticked off a goal we had set for ourselves. If I think of a specific example and a Test series that was amazing, then that would be the away series against the West Indies where Yasir Shah bowled Shannon Gabriel to help Pakistan win the final Test match. This win also meant that this was Pakistan’s first Test series win in the West Indies, and it was also the series when Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan retired. That’s a Test match that will always remain in my memory as it was special because we went into the third and final Test with the series tied at 1-1 and won the series in that dramatic manner.
And then getting to the number 1 position in the ICC Test team rankings was a big achievement but, I cannot take a huge amount of credit for that as I came at the very back-end of that and Misbah-ul-Haq and Waqar Younis were the ones who should take credit for getting the Test team to where they got to at that time. But then the development of our One-Day side where we started off at number 8 in the rankings and only just qualified for the Champions Trophy and to see that team regenerate and get better and better, was special. I really enjoyed that and then, of course, winning the Champions Trophy was the pinnacle of it all.
PakPassion.net: Becoming the number one-ranked T20 team must also rank very highly too?
Mickey Arthur: Absolutely and I take a lot of pride in us going unbeaten in 11 series, as when we started, we were down at number 9 in that list. Seeing that progression and the challenge of changing the game plans to match what we wanted and to suit our style of play was amazing. When we started off on this journey, we didn’t have the finishers, we didn’t have a power-hitter but we did it our way. We scrapped our way and we knew if we got to 150 or more, we had a bowling attack that could bowl sides out and that’s how we wanted to play which was to attack and look for wickets. In the process, to see the development of our young players such as Babar Azam, get better and better was very rewarding.
PakPassion.net: What were your lowest moments with the Pakistan team?
Mickey Arthur: There were a lot of tough times as well and the one that stands out the most happened when we lost Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan and had to regenerate the Test team which was hard work. After that point, our Test form waned and that was disappointing. With the One-Dayers, one thing that disappointed me a lot and rankled with me was that people actually said that we had a poor World Cup in 2019 which is simply not true.
Obviously, the goal of the World Cup is to win the tournament which we didn’t, but people tend to look past the fact that we finished it in a hard-fought manner and won five games and beat England and New Zealand in the round-robin phase. Of course, the games against India and West Indies were disasters and I sometimes think we had our World Cup campaign tarnished by just those two games. I feel that we finished the World Cup very strongly and as a team that had built momentum and had we got to the semi-final, who knows what would have happened.
PakPassion.net: How frustrating was it to not qualify for the semi-finals of the World Cup, and what did you make of MS Dhoni’s innings in the match against England?
Mickey Arthur: To me it was disappointing and damn frustrating, to say the least. I know our chances of making it to the semi-finals were out of our hands which was our own fault, but we had potentially two bites at the cherry and would have qualified for the semi-finals had New Zealand beaten England in Durham, and had India beaten England at Edgbaston. But, we only have ourselves to blame because losing so badly in our first game where we played poorly against the West Indies, meant that we could never compete on the basis of net run rate against any other side in the tournament.
So, I knew projecting forward that to make it to the semi-finals, we would have to be in the top 4 on our own accord without having to go to the net run rate equation. Initially, when I looked at our first 5 games, we had the game against the West Indies which in my mind when I was planning was a game, we would have won had we played well. We then had the game against England, and I knew that despite us losing badly in the preceding ODI series to England, we had competed well against them so that would be a tough win for us. And then on to Sri Lanka where I thought we had a good chance to get points and progress further in the tournament. But then we hit Australia, followed by India and that made for a tough first 5 games.
I would have taken in terms of my planning, and this isn’t a defeatist attitude or anything like that, three wins from those first 5 games. So, this meant beating West Indies, Sri Lanka and one win against one of Australia, England or India. Because then we knew we could beat South Africa if we played well, and the same applied to New Zealand and Bangladesh and of course we had to beat Afghanistan too. What we needed were 2 wins at the minimum out of the first 5 games but what we got was one win and one game that was rained-off which ultimately scuppered us. Whilst it was tough for us, I felt that our momentum got better and better as the tournament progressed. Our players got more and more confident in their game and were going exceptionally well by the end of the tournament.
PakPassion.net: Did you try and talk Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan out of retiring at the time they did?
Mickey Arthur: I really don’t think there is anything I could have done to prevent them from retiring. And to be brutally honest, instead of looking at it that way, we should perhaps celebrate their careers. It was the right time for both of them to leave as I did feel that there was a lot of new young talent that needed to play in their place. But of course, in order to do that, we would have to go through a period that was going to be tough for us in terms of finding replacements for these two batsmen. All in all, it was the right time for them to go and we celebrated their careers beautifully. Both were legends and will always hold that place in the game. Younis Khan with over 10,000 runs to his name was quite the professional as well and to see both Misbah and him go together was tough for us.
However, what that meant was that we had the opportunity to back Babar Azam, and for guys like Asad Shafiq, Azhar Ali to stand-up and be counted, and for Haris Sohail who I feel has phenomenal talent, to come into the team. I feel that Haris needs to get himself into the peak of his ability in terms of fitness but his skills are amazing. It was important that once Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan departed from the scene, these young players were given a chance to play and establish themselves for the sake of Pakistan cricket’s future.
PakPassion.net: He’s Pakistan’s leading batsman and now the T20I captain, do you feel that there is too much pressure on Babar Azam?
Mickey Arthur: I feel that pressure is a little overrated when it comes to international cricket. Babar Azam’s shown that he is a premier batsman in all forms of the game. I believe he is in the top 5 batsmen in all forms of the game and he will be there for however long he wants to be. We saw talent and potential in him in his early days and I know that we used to get so much flak for playing Babar in Test matches where people would say that he isn’t ready. But that was my one non-negotiable condition that Babar Azam had to play every game for Pakistan.
This was because I could see how good this guy was and I knew that if we invested in him, he would reward Pakistan cricket’s faith in him down the line which, I am glad to say, is coming to fruition now. I feel that he needed that game time to develop, particularly in red-ball cricket. This is because white-ball cricket is a relatively easier game to play but it’s Test cricket where your skills are tested on tough wickets. We needed him to go through those trials and tribulations early in his career to allow him to get to where he is now. But I do think Babar can handle everything as he is a strong character. I have seen him go from a boy to a man during my three years – and Babar Azam today can handle all these pressures, I am pretty sure of that.
PakPassion.net: How is your current assignment as Sri Lanka’s Head Coach going?
Mickey Arthur: There is incredible potential in this Sri Lanka side. I am loving the job and I am passionate about this team. To me, Sri Lanka today are where Pakistan were when I started with them. This is a whole new project for me, and this is something I love to do which is to build teams. This is a side that we need to build in all formats as they find themselves in pretty much the same place I found Pakistan which was right down the bottom of the rankings ladder. But I can say that this is a team which is hungry for success. They are a wonderful bunch of guys and they have the potential to be very good. What they need is good strong leadership and direction and they can be very good.
PakPassion.net: Will we ever see you wearing the green of Pakistan again?
Mickey Arthur: As they say, never say never! That is one thing I found about Pakistan during my time there.
Mickey Arthur took on the role of Pakistan Head Coach in May 2016 and proceeded to take his side to a drawn Test series against England, and subsequently saw his side become the top-ranked Test and T20I side. The undoubted highlight of his tenure came in 2017 when against all odds, his side became the winners of the Champions Trophy after defeating India in the final.
In a recent interview I did with him for Wisden, Arthur who is currently Head Coach of Sri Lanka, spoke about the highs and lows of his tenure with Pakistan, the pressure on Misbah-ul-Haq as he juggles the roles of Head Coach and Chief Selector for Pakistan, why it’s too late for Umar Akmal to establish himself in international cricket, Babar Azam's ability to handle the pressure of being T20I captain and Pakistan’s leading batsman and also the impression that Pakistan's 2019 World Cup was a failure.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/T2NMdnq.jpg" width="700">
PakPassion.net: What will be the memories of your role as Pakistan Head Coach?
Mickey Arthur: It’s difficult to describe the whole experience but suffice to say that working and living in Pakistan brought about a whole myriad of emotions. I loved every minute of coaching Pakistan, from the minute I set foot in Pakistan to the minute it all ended. I really enjoyed each and every moment of my time there. I loved the players and the way they embraced what I wanted and asked them to do and I thought that they became a lot more professional during my tenure. I really admired what the culture stood for in Pakistan and then there were the fans and the people who I will never forget.
I still get stopped in the streets by Pakistan fans who thank me for my time. In fact, I can go anywhere in the world and there will always be a Pakistan fan who will stop and greet me and thank me. The people are wonderful and even though we couldn’t play any cricket in Pakistan during my time as coach, the support we got everywhere was just truly unbelievable. My overriding memory and one that encapsulates the sort of support Pakistan has was when we beat New Zealand at Edgbaston in the 2019 World Cup. The memories of those moments with a sea of green and the flags and the sheer emotions, all those memories will stay with me forever.
PakPassion.net: How disappointed were you to have not been retained as Pakistan Head Coach?
Mickey Arthur: I was very disappointed as I expected to continue in the role as that had been communicated to me. So, I thought that was going to happen but unfortunately, it didn’t. But all good things come to an end, and Pakistan was a really good thing for me. And when one door closes, another door opens. This is what happened, I went back to Perth and set up a business which is doing well. And then Sri Lanka came calling and I am absolutely loving my time here in Colombo coaching the Sri Lankan team. It’s such an uncanny thing to note how similar it is to my time in Pakistan and I am really enjoying it.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/4o3ObkB.png" width="700">
PakPassion.net: Chief Selector, Head Coach of Pakistan and Head Coach of a PSL side, that’s a lot of responsibility for Misbah-ul-Haq isn’t it?
Mickey Arthur: It is a lot of responsibility. Although in my time with Pakistan I didn’t have all those roles, but I did sit alongside Inzamam-ul-Haq and the selection panel and we had an unbelievable relationship. Having experienced the whole sequence and process of interacting with players and the selectors, I can say that it’s a hell of a lot of work. I don’t think people realise the magnitude of the whole job until you are in it. Your communication skills are tested to the hilt and that’s one thing you have to stay on top of, and you have to keep all the stakeholders informed all the time. So, for Misbah, communication is going to be the key to make it all work, but I am pretty sure he has it all under control.
PakPassion.net: Do you think Misbah-ul-Haq has the skills and capabilities to be successful in all three aforementioned roles?
Mickey Arthur: It is a lot to ask of any person but Misbah knows Pakistan cricket and he is well respected and to top it all, he is a very intelligent man. If there is anyone who could make it work in such a role, I feel that person would be Misbah-ul-Haq.
PakPassion.net: What were the best and toughest aspects of being Pakistan Head Coach?
Mickey Arthur: I loved the cricket side of my role. I loved putting the team together and the day-to-day interaction with the players. It was a pleasure watching how the players bought into what we were trying to do and how they got better and better at it. But the toughest part of the role and the one that wore me down the most was dealing with the Pakistani media. The constant putting out fires and dealing with the untruths that were reported and the stretching of the stories to suit people’s agendas was very tiring. With every untruth that gets reported, comes a whole sequence of events as the person who is the subject of this misinformation starts believing it and you need to pacify him and then start all over again to build trust and relationships. I found that the hardest aspect was the continual perseverance and intrusion of the media.
PakPassion.net: Television pictures painted a 1000 words whenever you were on screen. How stressful a role is being a Head Coach of a national cricket team?
Mickey Arthur: My actions as captured by TV cameras exactly summed up what was going through my head. There were times when I was jumping out of the seat with happiness. And there were times when I was throwing my cap to the ground because I just couldn’t believe that we had committed an error like that. One thing about me for all to see is that I wear my heart on my sleeve, so those emotions erupt instinctively. There is nothing fake, and it happens because I am so involved and passionate about every match. I just want all my teams to do so well so badly that those emotions just come out.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/WhRVgRr.png" width="700">
PakPassion.net: Did you get the feeling that some of the younger Pakistani players think they are better than what they actually are?
Mickey Arthur: I did not get that feeling from our younger players. I would like to think that myself and the support staff with the ideas, game plans and structures that we wanted for Pakistan cricket changed that way of thinking in the younger players. The younger guys and Sarfaraz Ahmed and Azhar Ali were all unbelievable human beings who never ever took playing for Pakistan for granted. They worked incredibly hard as that’s what the environment demanded, and they gave 100% every time they came for training. Every time they were in the dressing room they brought in positivity and energy and I never ever had any problem with any of the younger players. In fact, I admired their will to want to get better.
PakPassion.net: When you took on the role of Pakistan Head Coach, what did you uncover?
Mickey Arthur: I was dismayed when I came into the role to see what the general work ethic was like but I can honestly say that at the end of it, the work ethic of these young players was second to none and as good as any other international team in the world at the moment. Yes, fitness was one thing that you still need to drive and keep driving hard and I am glad Misbah-ul-Haq is doing that because that’s the one area that you need to keep on pushing. But when we talk about the skills of Pakistani cricketers, I can say without a doubt that they work and work hard on their skills all the time.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/d7Xb8vo.png" width="700">
PakPassion.net: Umar Akmal has been a thorn in the side of many coaches. What are your thoughts on him?
Mickey Arthur: It’s definitely too late for him now. It’s sad because he is a likable enough bloke but what he needed was a real firm hand at the start of his career to guide him properly. I don’t think he got the right messages earlier in his career because if he had, he wouldn’t have gone down the route he has chosen to. He was frustrating to work with. He has all the talent in the world but has wasted it and unfortunately, he will now go down in history as one Pakistan player who has underachieved.
PakPassion.net: Any other players who you felt underachieved during your tenure as Head Coach of Pakistan?
Mickey Arthur: I’d like to think that we pushed the guys to almost become the best that they could be. I had one notable spat with Wahab Riaz, and we spoke openly about it as well. I felt that Wahab had so much ability and potential and at the point, we left him out of the side, he just wasn’t fulfilling his potential. I was really tough on him, but I was tough on him, for good reasons. That was because I cared, and I wanted him to be the best he could be. When Wahab did come back into the team, he came back fitter, stronger and faster and with a new focus. I just hope that he learnt that lesson and still has a lot in the tank because Wahab was the one who had unbelievable ability and should have been doing much more with that ability at the time I left him out.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/atvnb6M.png" width="700">
PakPassion.net: What were the best moments of your time with the Pakistan side?
Mickey Arthur: The high points for me were every time we ticked off a goal we had set for ourselves. If I think of a specific example and a Test series that was amazing, then that would be the away series against the West Indies where Yasir Shah bowled Shannon Gabriel to help Pakistan win the final Test match. This win also meant that this was Pakistan’s first Test series win in the West Indies, and it was also the series when Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan retired. That’s a Test match that will always remain in my memory as it was special because we went into the third and final Test with the series tied at 1-1 and won the series in that dramatic manner.
And then getting to the number 1 position in the ICC Test team rankings was a big achievement but, I cannot take a huge amount of credit for that as I came at the very back-end of that and Misbah-ul-Haq and Waqar Younis were the ones who should take credit for getting the Test team to where they got to at that time. But then the development of our One-Day side where we started off at number 8 in the rankings and only just qualified for the Champions Trophy and to see that team regenerate and get better and better, was special. I really enjoyed that and then, of course, winning the Champions Trophy was the pinnacle of it all.
PakPassion.net: Becoming the number one-ranked T20 team must also rank very highly too?
Mickey Arthur: Absolutely and I take a lot of pride in us going unbeaten in 11 series, as when we started, we were down at number 9 in that list. Seeing that progression and the challenge of changing the game plans to match what we wanted and to suit our style of play was amazing. When we started off on this journey, we didn’t have the finishers, we didn’t have a power-hitter but we did it our way. We scrapped our way and we knew if we got to 150 or more, we had a bowling attack that could bowl sides out and that’s how we wanted to play which was to attack and look for wickets. In the process, to see the development of our young players such as Babar Azam, get better and better was very rewarding.
PakPassion.net: What were your lowest moments with the Pakistan team?
Mickey Arthur: There were a lot of tough times as well and the one that stands out the most happened when we lost Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan and had to regenerate the Test team which was hard work. After that point, our Test form waned and that was disappointing. With the One-Dayers, one thing that disappointed me a lot and rankled with me was that people actually said that we had a poor World Cup in 2019 which is simply not true.
Obviously, the goal of the World Cup is to win the tournament which we didn’t, but people tend to look past the fact that we finished it in a hard-fought manner and won five games and beat England and New Zealand in the round-robin phase. Of course, the games against India and West Indies were disasters and I sometimes think we had our World Cup campaign tarnished by just those two games. I feel that we finished the World Cup very strongly and as a team that had built momentum and had we got to the semi-final, who knows what would have happened.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/tlDaEUc.png" width="700">
PakPassion.net: How frustrating was it to not qualify for the semi-finals of the World Cup, and what did you make of MS Dhoni’s innings in the match against England?
Mickey Arthur: To me it was disappointing and damn frustrating, to say the least. I know our chances of making it to the semi-finals were out of our hands which was our own fault, but we had potentially two bites at the cherry and would have qualified for the semi-finals had New Zealand beaten England in Durham, and had India beaten England at Edgbaston. But, we only have ourselves to blame because losing so badly in our first game where we played poorly against the West Indies, meant that we could never compete on the basis of net run rate against any other side in the tournament.
So, I knew projecting forward that to make it to the semi-finals, we would have to be in the top 4 on our own accord without having to go to the net run rate equation. Initially, when I looked at our first 5 games, we had the game against the West Indies which in my mind when I was planning was a game, we would have won had we played well. We then had the game against England, and I knew that despite us losing badly in the preceding ODI series to England, we had competed well against them so that would be a tough win for us. And then on to Sri Lanka where I thought we had a good chance to get points and progress further in the tournament. But then we hit Australia, followed by India and that made for a tough first 5 games.
I would have taken in terms of my planning, and this isn’t a defeatist attitude or anything like that, three wins from those first 5 games. So, this meant beating West Indies, Sri Lanka and one win against one of Australia, England or India. Because then we knew we could beat South Africa if we played well, and the same applied to New Zealand and Bangladesh and of course we had to beat Afghanistan too. What we needed were 2 wins at the minimum out of the first 5 games but what we got was one win and one game that was rained-off which ultimately scuppered us. Whilst it was tough for us, I felt that our momentum got better and better as the tournament progressed. Our players got more and more confident in their game and were going exceptionally well by the end of the tournament.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/3Mam2nD.png" width="700">
PakPassion.net: Did you try and talk Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan out of retiring at the time they did?
Mickey Arthur: I really don’t think there is anything I could have done to prevent them from retiring. And to be brutally honest, instead of looking at it that way, we should perhaps celebrate their careers. It was the right time for both of them to leave as I did feel that there was a lot of new young talent that needed to play in their place. But of course, in order to do that, we would have to go through a period that was going to be tough for us in terms of finding replacements for these two batsmen. All in all, it was the right time for them to go and we celebrated their careers beautifully. Both were legends and will always hold that place in the game. Younis Khan with over 10,000 runs to his name was quite the professional as well and to see both Misbah and him go together was tough for us.
However, what that meant was that we had the opportunity to back Babar Azam, and for guys like Asad Shafiq, Azhar Ali to stand-up and be counted, and for Haris Sohail who I feel has phenomenal talent, to come into the team. I feel that Haris needs to get himself into the peak of his ability in terms of fitness but his skills are amazing. It was important that once Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan departed from the scene, these young players were given a chance to play and establish themselves for the sake of Pakistan cricket’s future.
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PakPassion.net: He’s Pakistan’s leading batsman and now the T20I captain, do you feel that there is too much pressure on Babar Azam?
Mickey Arthur: I feel that pressure is a little overrated when it comes to international cricket. Babar Azam’s shown that he is a premier batsman in all forms of the game. I believe he is in the top 5 batsmen in all forms of the game and he will be there for however long he wants to be. We saw talent and potential in him in his early days and I know that we used to get so much flak for playing Babar in Test matches where people would say that he isn’t ready. But that was my one non-negotiable condition that Babar Azam had to play every game for Pakistan.
This was because I could see how good this guy was and I knew that if we invested in him, he would reward Pakistan cricket’s faith in him down the line which, I am glad to say, is coming to fruition now. I feel that he needed that game time to develop, particularly in red-ball cricket. This is because white-ball cricket is a relatively easier game to play but it’s Test cricket where your skills are tested on tough wickets. We needed him to go through those trials and tribulations early in his career to allow him to get to where he is now. But I do think Babar can handle everything as he is a strong character. I have seen him go from a boy to a man during my three years – and Babar Azam today can handle all these pressures, I am pretty sure of that.
PakPassion.net: How is your current assignment as Sri Lanka’s Head Coach going?
Mickey Arthur: There is incredible potential in this Sri Lanka side. I am loving the job and I am passionate about this team. To me, Sri Lanka today are where Pakistan were when I started with them. This is a whole new project for me, and this is something I love to do which is to build teams. This is a side that we need to build in all formats as they find themselves in pretty much the same place I found Pakistan which was right down the bottom of the rankings ladder. But I can say that this is a team which is hungry for success. They are a wonderful bunch of guys and they have the potential to be very good. What they need is good strong leadership and direction and they can be very good.
PakPassion.net: Will we ever see you wearing the green of Pakistan again?
Mickey Arthur: As they say, never say never! That is one thing I found about Pakistan during my time there.
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