The amount of mess created in PAK cricket over the years, decades - just to bring it to a sanity itÂ’ll take at least two years for any regime.
I personally think, after a slow start, Mani & his team has done an amazing job. One of the reasons for that delay I can explain - they started the journey in September 2018, just at the beginning of domestic season in a World Cup year, therefore any changeover was earliest possible is after 2019 WC, almost a year later. They actually managed to fast track many issues considering the scope & magnitude of the task and constraints.
Apart from the restructuring of domestic cricket (which was over due), they have changed the team management structure (Misbah as team director doesnÂ’t mean that the revised management style is wrong - had Arthur been appointed at similar autonomy, we could have seen a different PCT by now), and they have reduced the unnecessary/incompetent Human Resources from the office. Bringing SRL to PAK was a little success over a continuous effort (of bringing international cricket in Pakistan), but their next mile stone is a massive one, a game changer - arranging whole PSL in Pakistan.
Also, I liked the effort of Mani to decentralise power. This is the first PCB regime that has identified two different role profiles for top two executives of the office - the chairman & his governing board on policy issues, while CEO & his leadership team to run operations. In a way, Mani has shared the God like power of PCB chairmen with a subject matter expert pro - that was the first requirement for a functional PCB management.
Third area that they have identified, which definitely should bring success in the long run if sustained is that the focus of PAK cricket has shifted at least somewhat from the PSL & only PSL to domestic cricket. ItÂ’s easy to use the distractions like PSL to show glittering progress, but the burning issue that needed to be addressed was domestic FC cricket. Still, lots of work to be done, but these are the steps in right direction.
I see a misunderstanding of the concept of revised domestic structure, which is often mistaken as a fake copy of Australian system - which actually isnÂ’t. The only apparent similarities are 6 teams at top tier, even then thatÂ’s not true - there are actually 12 teams and around 300 players at top bracket, under a secured payment structure. The idea is not about implanting Australian model into PAK cricket, rather building a tier based pyramid system that covers whole country in separate layers without overlapping. They have achieved that perfectly at 3 levels - club, city/district, Regional >>> leading to national team. ThatÂ’s the standard model of every major cricket systems from Australia to Afghanistan - the previous model that PCB used was unique of his type and a failed system.
The next challenge for this management will be to take out individuals from PAK cricketÂ’s thought process to a system where process works, not person. PAK cricket canÂ’t sustain, let alone progress if it has to wait for every here and there - when a Kardar or Mushtaq or Imran is born to lead the side or when an Air Marshal Noor Khan or Arif Ali Abbasi is found to run the PCB!!!! If they can lead PCB to that state even in next 5 years, itÂ’ll be the groundbreaking progress for PAK cricket - these 0-3s are just the outcome of a systematic failure of years, decades, which needed to be fixed; on field result is an outcome of that process, not a separate entity.
