Just looking at the current Regional ODI tournament, it's pretty apparent that the talent is not there at the domestic level. Also the PCB's complete lack of effort in our domestic is also apparent. A few things I've noticed during this tournament:
1. Grounds - Horrible grounds. The ball is bumping as it goes into the outfield. No sane person would think to dive on these grounds and then we expect our ground fielding to improve at the international level? Madness to expect a radical change in our ground fielding when our local grounds are not up to the standard of international cricket.
2. Captaincy - We have been struggling with captaincy issues and it is quite apparent to see why. During the current ODI tournament, just look at the captains of the 8 sides:
FATA - Fawad Khan (30+ years of age)
Peshawar - Junaid Khan and Jamaluddin (31+ years of age)
Islamabad - Zohaib Ahmed (31 years of age)
Rawalpindi - Sohail Tanvir (31+ years of age)
Khi Blues - Khalid Latif (31+ years of age)
Khi Whites - Akbar-ur-Rehman (33+ years of age)
Lhr Blues - Salman Butt (probably would never captain Pakistan again)
Lhr Whites - Sami Aslam (21+ years of age)
So out of the 8 teams, there's only one player who's captaining a team who is in the 20s (Sami Aslam). The rest of the captains are either discarded rejects of our international team or domestic players well into their 30s. How can we have a good captain in the international circuit if we are making 30+ players with an absolutely mediocre domestic record, captains of their regional teams?
3. Too many teams - We already have a dearth of talent and on top of that we are not allowing decent players to improve themselves by making them play against the best in the country. 8 teams meaning 88 players are too many. The premier ODI and 4-day tournaments need to be 4 teams or at best 5 (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab, KP and Fata/GB (if need be)). Or have 5 departments whatever. You can't have regional teams and departments playing your domestic together just because you need to satisfy some people. PCB needs to put put down an iron fist on things and have 4-5 teams. I know they will face problems with regional cricket associations who want their own team but if we want to correct our structure, hard decisions will need to be taken.
4. Pitches - The current tournament and even past tournaments have seen green pitches in our domestic ODIs where the teams are not even crossing 200. PCB needs to ensure green pitches are not made for ODIs in our domestic. All over the world, ODIs are now a 300-350 run game and batting paradises are being prepared 95% of the time. We need to do the same. Prepare flatbeds which will do 2 things. Firstly it will ensure our batsmen will learn to score quickly. Secondly, because the pitches won't do anything, the bowlers will need to do something to take wickets. This way we might find some tearaway fast bowler. Green pitches means we will produce trundlers like Imran Khan Jr.
All of this is just going to be a start. If we implement this now, we'll see the fruits probably 6-7 years later. So its imperative to start now and start from scratch. But for that we need some able minded professionals who take no-nonsense from our regional cricket associations (not like Shakil Shaikh). Do we have any?
