Younis and PCB are the real reason for this situation and ranking.. Younis who was touted to become the captain after inzi and they also groomed salman butt for the next when younis leaves... Had there be woolmer, younis would have accepted the captaincy and it would be alright and i can bet pak wouldnt be ranked at 9th and this bad.. After Inzi there were 5-6 captaincy changes within 5 years...finally had to settle with misbah for all formats.. Misbah in return to save his captaincy till next CWC he kept silent on selecting the seniors and proven failures. this is just what i feel for the embarrassing ranking right now
Again, pointing fingers to wrong corners. YK declined Captaincy exactly 10 years back - since than 6 teams have leap-frogged Pakistan.
It's good to hear that the pain is felt, therefore I don't need to rub salt (apparently) in the wound. For the nth time, I must say that, it doesn't give me any pleasure to write the negative staff, for a team I grew up watching for the exciting brand of cricket.
But, what you have written is fraction of BIGGER problem. It's really hard to imagine PAK at this spot, just about 4 years after making a WC SF; but the biggest failure for PAK Cricket as a whole is not to see this coming even couple of years back. And, now it's in such a hole that quick fix (raise in ranking) is impossible - in fact, it'll go from bad to worse, at least in terms of ranking, once the golden period of 2012-13 is deferred or wiped out of Ranking maths.
One good news (at least for now) is the restructuring of the Domestic List A Tournament. I am keeping my lips in check keeping close eye, on the execution of the idea. If they can make a National League with top 200-250 players in 16-20 teams, in 2 Divisions with relegation & promotion at stake & with significant numbers of matches (at least 15) on good wickets under fair selection & umpiring, it's possible to form the core bunch of players that can compete for 2023 WC title, may be even a good bet for 2019 SF at least; but lots of time is already lost & a good generation of cricketers are lost.
If you look at any ODI team, the core bunch of players are between 23 to 29 years of age - add to that few U23 & few 29-35 group players - you get a fantastic squad of a mixture of youth, experience & players at their prime. This is the biggest damage in PAK team - there are hopes in Babar, Sami (Haroon Rashid Zindabad - he looked at his Domestic stats & then selected for Test team & no idiot (read sports jurno) even asked him why he had not considered a player with 50/90 List A stat for ODI), Aamad, Nawaz & few others, while there are plenty of experience, in fact too many for comfort. BUT, the players that should have been the core of this team - Umar, Ahmed, Amin, Haris, Aamir, Anwar, Sarfu, Asad, Imad, Rizwan, Maqsood, JK, Hammad, Yamin, Yasir, Jamshed ...... are the most disappointing bunch. This is the lost generation that really is hurting PAK team & it'll take a monumental effort to rectify that in next 5 years.
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