1) Lets assume Babar got rid of the seniors, well you dont have to look too far to see what happens with the Sarfi situation and the media. You cant get rid of seniors without having the capital of results behind you and he didnt. I hated the decision to pick tripe like AA for years but my neck isnt on the line if it didnt work.
Our wickets these days are pretty much the same as they always were. Look at Dennis Lillee stats from the late 70s, or Curtley Ambrose, ONLY taking a wicket in PK in 1997. The only difference that we had the bowlers to take wickets in those conditions, we simply dont these days. This isnt a Babar problem this is structural problem in PK cricket and the best you could argue is that he didnt have sporting wickets but if he did and we lost, the same guys that are criticising today, would be decryimg the stupidity of playing on sporty wickets. I do agree that he should have had the courage to play on supporting wickets because he as a batsman, is more than capable and bowlers like Naseem would have been given a fair chance. But if you think we would had proper sporty wickets under any other captain, then you are deluded
KG is the flavour of the month and as the old saying goes, players are always better when outside the team than when they are in the team. For the little i have seen of him, he reminds me of an 8 that bats up the order. But i am being harsh and lots hope my 1st instinct was wrong on him.
PK wickets have never favoured the pacers unless we are in the North in the middle of winter or the grass has been left on like in Karachi in 2006, its the quality of pacers that have taken the wickets and as the Aussie pacers showed and also the England pacers, thats still the case.
As far as spinners are concerned, we have always had decent spinners and that has stopped with the decline of Yasir and other teams have improved. We cant win with these spinners because they are useless.
As i said earlier we need to get wickets to be Sporty but our fans have been seduced by the UAE results on slow turners. Either way, Babar wont last long if results are poor as recently but the problems are much deeper than Babar.
Pakistan have a long list of problems and yes not every single one is going to be fixed just like that, Also i never said at any point Babar was the sole problem. However his incompetent and negative captaincy is a huge contributor to to why pakistan has won just 1 out of the last 10 tests its played.
Look at england 12 months ago and they were a mess, have they fixed everything they wanted to? No they havent. But what ECB have done is they have employed the correct / suitable in important positions across the ECB, they have also set out a plan on how they are going to improve cricket domestically, how and when they are going to play 4 day cricket, what type of players they are going to pick and how they are going to play. Yes all of that takes times. What england did which could immediately change their fortunes was change coach and captain. They got rid of silverwood and Root was no longer captain.
Also when stokes was given / offered captaincy - did you see him crying to Rob key and saying sorry but i dont think i can take over these current players and get results etc.. he step up and took it upon himself to improve the teams fortunes himself with resources that he has.
What we saw from Babar was him going to Rameez after england series and making a load of excuses because of a few injuries the team couldnt compete. Negative and cowards mentality, You are playing at home so there would be no limit on players you could utilize for the series. You could see the even during the New zealand series after a dressing down from New chairmen / selectors etc... Babar was still playing in a negative manner.
His declaration in the 1st test made vs NZ made zero sense and was pretty much a Hansie Cronje type decision.
Then the 2nd test vs NZ the team decides to bat like snails in the 2nd session on day 5 "as the supposed plan was to have a go in final session when the req run rate had gone up which made it more difficult.
These are the bizarre and dumb decisions of the captain, this is the mindset the current team is in. An average team which is not getting best out of the team.Add to that you have a coach whose whole emphasis is to "say your prayers" and hope for the best. When your team shows no game plans etc again its not making most of the players.
that is something pakistan can change in their set up and immediately.
You say that our current spinners are useless and i agree with you, Yet Babar was instant on "spin wickets" for the england series. Again just shows how clueless the captain is when hes wanted to try and win games with spinners when we have no real quality spinners and on top of that they way he uses spinners, game plans, fielding setting is always very poor.
Then the was the fascination of continually selected Bits and pieces players series after series as again captain had zero idea about team balance. Everything Babar has done as captain from team selection, game plans, mindet, pitch requests has been detrimental to the team results.
Finally KG isnt flavour of the month, Pakistan had a shaheens tour to Sri lanka which pretty much was used to identify players who were on fringes of the team and could be future test players. That sqaud included Saud Shakeel, KG, Usman Salluddin, Agha Salman. In the case of the first 3 these are the players who should have been ear marked for spot longterm in paksitan middle order. All those players did well on the shaheens tour. Its not just about looking at domestic performances as our domestic cricket is weak, Shaheens tours are the ideal platform for grooming players for test cricket. So again i go back to the point where i said 12-15 months ago both Saud and KG should have been in pakistans sqaud. Instead Babar is happy persisting with trash like Fawad, Azhar and now shan. So we will end up with a situation where KG will probably get a test debut away to Australia, which will be plain dumb way of introducing a player into test sqaud. Pakistans team building under Babar has been shambolic to say the least.
