I saw a video recently where Bazid Khan was criticising Pakistan's flawed domestic structure after yet another batting collapse. He was saying that the pitches used in the domestics were heavily watered and under prepared ones and went on to say that non-standard tampered balls are used in the domestic circuit to aid swing and pace bowling more. He criticised that such wickets have destroyed the techniques of Pakistani batsmen.
That was a really interesting observation. While it is true that playing in difficult wickets improves your technique overall to cope with malicious conditions, the key is to lay a solid foundation for your technique first and then move on to the difficult aspects of batting. The problem with playing on such wickets is that your technique gets modified in such a way that you are forced to survive rather than dominate, even in easier conditions. Note that most youngsters in Pakistan grow up playing tape ball cricket, which behaves very differently from the standard cricket ball that you find elsewhere. Therefore most batsmen will be reluctant to play through the line or play freely as they will be caught nicking behind to the keeper very easily on such difficult wickets than on standard ones. Couple this with the lack of standard junior coaches and you have young batsmen developing their own technique to "survive" rather than to "dominate" against pace bowling, which may be different to the usual conventional technique.
This is quite apparent in a lot of Pakistani batsmen as well, many batsmen have a sort of crouching technique or an exaggerated trigger movement. Sarfaraz, Khurram Manzoor come to mind, even Younis has a crouched stance, but that works for him. I don't know how these modifications help them, however I have seen quite a few batsmen with these altered techniques. This is why they seem to struggle against genuine pace bowling even on benign wickets. This is apparent in the ODIs and T20s where when the batsmen are forced to rotate strike under pressure match situations, they are unable to rotate freely and end up playing a get out of jail shot which rather predictably skies upwards. Even in the last England tour, the batsmen played a lot of dot balls against Broad and Anderson in the UAE and played freely only when the spinners came on.
You first need to develop a wide shot array playing on all sides of the wicket. That cannot be developed if you grow up playing in these malicious conditions for stroke play. After you lay a solid foundation for your technique, you can then move on to the difficult aspects and nuances of batting like playing in swinging or bouncing conditions. Most yesteryear batsmen used to develop that aspect of their game with a stint in the county circuit, but nowadays not many batsmen in the world opt to go there. Hence they are forced to learn from their mistakes with experience and more tours in such conditions.
But you cannot opt to do it the other way round. Trying to master the difficult part first (in the absence of standard batting coaches), without developing a strong foundation for your technique first is like trying to learn a googly or doosra by yourself, without learning to land the balls six times in the right place first. To summarise, if what Mr.Bazid Khan says is correct, a conscious effort should be made to replace the sub standard wickets and balls in the domestic circuit and also PCB should employ world class batting coaches instead of those without much credibility. Also if an effort is made to provide good grassy turf for the players to practise on and the fitness aspect is stressed upon (quite a few Pak players have a tubby appearance), then that will go a long way in improving the fielding aspect as well and can transform the Pak side into a world class top 3 LOI side.
