The biggest cliche trotted out by our fanbase is how we lack an "aggressive" mindset.
So with a bit more fake macho posturing and fewer "timid kittens" in the team, we'd be conquering the world apparently.
Yes, this false hope of having an aggressive mindset just serves to give deluded fans the pretense that all is not lost.
Let me be the first to say that Pakistan Cricket is staring at the barrel of a gun.
In simple economics, there is a theory or a phrase we describe as being "the window of opportunity". It's a time period where any citizens, governments, or firms can reap the rewards of a desirable action. It's an incredibly short time period as well, perhaps to balance between doing the right thing but staying on your toes as well.
I could ask a lot of people here when this so-called "window of opportunity" occurred, but hardly many would correctly mention it.
Just to make it fair, I'll say that there were exactly two windows like the one I described earlier (post-2010).
They were the 2011 World Cup and the 2015 World Cup. Our performances in the 2011 World Cup were okay, we should really have won the tournament had our ingrained ability to drop catches not preceded our own performances. We were horrible in the 2015 World Cup though. One could also add the 2016 T20 World Cup to that list, but I didn't as it was quite insignificant as far as the relevance of the format was concerned at that time period.
After getting out of both the 2011 and 2015 World Cup, we continued to follow the same path. In that time period, a lot of teams who got knocked out or didn't qualify had the chance to improve their performances by triggering a change in their entire domestic systems.
England is perhaps the biggest example. Do you seriously think they just got players like Roy and Bairstow overnight? This was an entire process, where they agreed upon a distinct set of criteria where they would select players. They had no issues in getting rid of players who had served them well, it was not in their interest to carry around such players for any longer.
New Zealand also went through a transformation like this, and a lot of other boards did as well. This happened because they were willing to put the time and resources into their domestic systems to produce a desirable change.
After losing a World Cup, domestic performers for that country would see it as an opportunity to make the team ahead of other players. That is when you can afford to change the requirements in domestic cricket, either by investing in more explosive players like England did, or diversifying the already available pool of players to include those which you might need in the future. The incentive to perform rises when you know there is an opportunity, and that is what these boards capitalized on.
After both of these events, Pakistan made minimal changes in the aspect that cost us the tournaments, being our batting and fielding performances. We kept on moving along with the same washed up group of players until the 2016 T20 World Cup, and even after, we continued with most of those players as well. We missed that period of development where other boards saw the types of players needed for the new international arena.
Do our fans really think that the new ultra-aggressive players of the modern day and age came around overnight?
The other boards (the ones succeeding right now) saw this change coming and had no issues investing in players of this caliber. We missed that boat a long time ago, and your ticket doesn't stay valid for long.
As a result, the boards that are succeeding right now are those who invested greatly into players who could fit into the standards of modern cricket moving forward. We made no such investments, and if we did, they are poor ones.
The successful boards were able to predict the change in international cricket, and dispose of those players who did not suit them any longer.
Do you think Kohli took captaincy from MS because he was a better captain? No, it is because India saw that Yuvraj, Raina, and Dhoni did not serve them any purpose in T20Is, and it allowed Kohli the freedom to choose and develop players according to the modern standard.
Look at the most successful teams right now and compare their squads from the World Cups they participated in, to the following years afterward.
These teams made the hard decisions and looked into the future, whereas we failed to invest in the youth and are looking into the past to find players who performed millennia ago.
I'm glad that you realize this [MENTION=53290]Markhor[/MENTION].
We are right now at a cliff as I would describe it. There is very little time left before we fall over, and that won't be a pretty sight.
I hope our fans realize that Pakistan doesn't have a plethora of talent and that too because we failed to invest in good a grassroots structure and didn't make the right decisions regarding Pakistan A tours.
Fans need to wake up and see the reality of the situation: we are at the peak of what I'll describe as a rollercoaster ride. You hope that there might be a few bumps on the way to break your fall, but undoubtedly, our cricket is going down the drain.
It all comes down to the same problems like poor selection, no investment, pathetic leadership, nepotism, and the usual stuff you see with Pakistan Cricket.
People might say that I'm being dramatic, but this is a reality that most of us need to start accepting. There are enough signs pointing towards a great downfall of Pakistan Cricket, and there's no point in making yourself feel good after you batter an already crippled Zimbabwe team.
There's no point in making suggestions to improve either because nobody in the higher level of the PCB can do anything about the decisions that should have been taken years ago.
So let it be clear: you can't fix our cricket with injecting artificial aggression if half the team is content with beating the bottom 5 teams. Good teams have a drive to succeed, we do not.
