No end of this plight in the near future. We've been on a downward curve for about 3 decades but this blip is too steep to fix via band aids.
There are multiple reasons, will try to list a few (not in order of priority, not listing all as that's just impossible & also way beyond my intellect)
1. Lack of athleticism:
Have been watching cricket for 20 years, in those 20 years I've seen about 1 or 2 bad fielders in the Australian team. One of them is Zampa who probably drops more catches than most pak players but other than that, can't even think of another bad fielder from Aus.
But just look at the current mohsin naqvi 11, there are 4 players who are competing for the spot of worst fielder of all time.
Abrar. S Mirza. Khushdil. Fahim from the top of the mind while others are also bad or average at best.
At the end of the day, you are forced to ask, where is the athleticism? Why do we have people in the team with such limited natural athletic ability?
2. Grass-root cricket's inability to create good products:
The grass root & age level cricket is just not delivering any results. Despite the U19 setup being active for decades, players that are being produced are no different from the players that LQ picks up from random trials.
Nepotism & age fudging has destroyed our age level cricket; the North region for example always had the quota for a shakeel sheikh "fail" son. They kept getting into teams having triple digit bowling & single digit batting averages. Now we have other nepotistic selections who have been moved to the front of the queue because of their connections. It doesn't matter what age they are, they just get drafted in while the genuine talent stands in the queues of trails, loses heart, & moves on to other things to earn a paltry salary.
3. No Superstars & match winners:
The strength of Pak was never built around systems and structures or cohesive unity within the team, it was around the brilliance of a couple of players & past sides had around 4-6 match winners in their ranks. Now you look at the team and there's hardly any matchwinner present. The current team has one in Fakhar & even he's mentally unable to read the game or the situation. Outside of him, we have zero match winners in batting but at least there are a few potential candidates but the bowling matchwinner cupboard is bare no matter what the format is. & no, you cannot create dustbowls & get Sajid/Noman to do your bidding because they are not Warne or Murali, they'll get out bowled by literal no bodies like Jomel Worrican.
How long can you just keep hoping that a mercurial talent from Gaggu Mandi will just break the barriers & land you wins from the getgo?
4. Incompetence of PCB continues to transcend to the next level:
The PCB management was always a joke but the last few years have just been terrible even by our own whimsically bad standards. PCB chairperson seat remained part of a musical chair game for a few years & now it's being firmly occupied by a person who doesn't even do it as a full-time job. You cannot win trophies with kids & part-timers.
The only thing that we have gotten good during the last few years is coming up with fancy buzz words. Stuff like "Now I'll do surgery", kicking foreign coaches on mystic visions, & rehashing the domestic cricket by increasing teams, then decreasing them again, & spending billions of rupees on vanity projects has done nothing positive for our cricket.
We have also witnessed during this time nepotism for PCB jobs like never before. Random nobodies from police are shafted in to manage teams, become security advisors, a random so called journalist is currently the head of PCB media, Wahab became a minister, & so many other diabolical choices like that. When you treat the only sport like your personal gravy train, it'll become nothing but a place where you'll be a god whose favor everybody would chase after. You'll never hear criticism, you'll never manage dissent, such diabolical management leads to nothing but hubris.
5. Rudderless on the field:
Finally, & while there are many others, I'm going to stop listing more reasons & say that we have a leadership crisis in the playing field. Be it Babar, Shan, or even Agha; none of them are natural born street smart leaders. We had since inception suave highly educated men who lead us, AG Kardar became PCB head later in his life, Hanif & Mushtaq were educated & street smart, IK was suave, smooth & an Oxonian, & even Wasim had an aura despite his many flaws. Not saying we need another IK level personality to revive our cricket but we need someone who is at least 5 on the 1-10 scale of charisma & leadership ability.
We have nobody zero personality captains who aren't even automatic selections in the eleven, & then they get input from support staff & marketing gurus backstage & are handed fancy buzzwords which they mindlessly regurgitate to us.
The irony is laughable as these absolutely clueless captains & misfits try to upsell these heavy noble concepts to us while themselves they are part of the problem & not the solution.
Shan's tenure had this comical slogan; "the Pakistan way" & it entailed "taking the most aggressive route on every ball that's possible". I mean can you even do it with an eleven that fields like they have arthritis, bats like they are afraid of the cricketing ball, & bowls like all of them have had knee/hip replacement surgeries just in the morning.
& Now to double up the fun, we have Agha who is trying to sell us "intent merchants", a brave new era where he'll just pull us from the quagmire that we are in via sheer weight of intent. Just like the story of our politics, all the faults were in the previous regime, new slogans, mostly same players & system but this time everything will be different.
Are we this gullible & naive to believe that it is going to happen?
It is sport, & even with just pure random chaos that this universe is, we will have a day or two where we'll win. It'll be sporadic & kind of glorious when it'll work out, but it'll fail mostly & then we'll be asked to keep believing because it worked on so & so day & also for another country.
(England & Bazbaall will be mentioned because they are the flavor of the decade. It worked for them on the back of generational talents btw, while we have 2 and a half good players & that's about it.)
I'd end this post by reiterating that the purpose of sports is not winning or losing. The main rationale for sports is to create a sports oriented healthy society where young kids instead of taking up more sinister hobbies, spend their energies chasing sporting glory.
We should also openly & honestly admit that we were never a great cricketing nation as it'll ease the burden from our shoulders when we'll lose. Our success was a blip on the back of a few charismatic individuals & then a few others lead the mantel in the slipstream of their afterburners. The moment that stream ended, our success dried away as well. If you think I'm wrong, check Pak's test record decade by decade to see when we won & how much did we win.
We should stop thinking about the death of Pak cricket, we should try to create avenues where young people continue to keep playing sports. Build more grounds, bring young kids of all genders into sport, have school cricket, have competitive cricket in ways where people don't have to make a choice between sports or a career when they are just 16. So many on this forum must have had dreams of being a cricketer but then reality set in & a choice between a university or pursuing cricket came up & we picked up a university.
That is why I started my post with the words no band aids can fix this rut, so FGS, let's build proper systems as it's never too late for that. The sporting glory isn't just the trophies; it's in the glistening eyes of the young kids who can dare to dream, & then have the ability to pursue those dreams.
What 11 people do on a said day is immaterial, what millions can envision, hope, & aspire to be is the real silverware. That's how PCT will snap out of the rut that we are in.
