In 2018, with the appointments of Ehsan Mani and Wasim Khan in PCB management there was a collective sense of excitement at the prospect of more professionally run organisation. A couple of years later (albeit controversy free) we as fans feel they are doing perfectly fine with everything else other than cricket betterment, thats the irony.
At the start of their tenure the first major decision taken by this management was to abolish plethora of domestic teams and reduce them down to 6 for 1st XI and 2nd XI. In my opinion, this has still remained the best decision this management has taken. It was long overdue and hopefully we would see the increase quality and competitiveness of domestic games. I'm not having a bash at Fawad but I personally feel if this was done in 2010 then Fawad would not have held a similar domestic record as he currently does. In any case, I have hope of churning out better cricketers in 3 years time and hoping that u19 stars would not fade away like it has happened previously.
After this it has been quite a downtrend with extremely poor decision making being done by this think tank. Starting off with the debacle that was the firing of Mickey Arthur and the support team. With all due respect to people in this think tank I cannot understand how they could not see that Mickey led a 6/7 ranked team to Champions Trophy win. Mickey was the best thing that happened to Pakistan cricket in a while. On top of my head the things he did well included making fitness a priority; discarding Shahzad and Akmal and deliver in tournaments (Pakistan was doing well in WC too where I feel they were slightly unlucky there).
To have Mickey fired was the dumbest thing this think tank could have done and to replace him with Misbah was absolute facepalm worthy. Misbah had zero experience of any sort while Mickey was a trophy winning coach. I cannot understand this decision whatsoever. To make him the chief selector as well was a good move but imagine Mickey having the power to coach and select players! If Mickey was given this dual role and with 3 tournaments happening in next 3 years I'm quite confident that Hafeez and Malik would not have been part of this tour and neither would have Ifti made it to Australia tour. We need a visionary to change things around not someone who is content with mediocrity.
This was the biggest blunder this management made. However, the recent direction of the think tank is even more worrisome. The appointments of Younus, Waqar and Mushy makes absolutely no sense. They either have no experience or they are rinsed and repeated failures. What is a long-term view of these appointments? To make matters worse what is Razzaq, Faisal Iqbal, Basit Ali, etc doing coaching domestic sides? Why is name of Akhtar's name doing rounds for the post of chief selector? Why is PCB heading into this direction is beyond my understanding. Its pretty obvious if there is a person making noise in media then they are given roles in PCB without much thinking. However, they fail to realise there would be a time when these nobody's (in coaching) would be replaced by someone else and at that point the noise they are going to make will be even louder. Further, imagine what the domestic coaches have to go through when their jobs are grabbed by media opportunists. I do not see these bunch of individuals creating any positive impact on Pakistan cricket however I can already see a massive fallout happening due to ego clashes.
It just seems like PCB currently has no direction or vision whatsover, it neither has short term nor long-term goals down. It feels its survival mode when there is absolutely no need to be in this mode. Braver decisions could have been taken for better of Pakistan cricket but this management has succumbed to pressure from nobody.
