If anyone had a chance to watch the recent matches at Karachi Stadium (The KCL Final)and the Pakistan vs. Pakistan A T20 at Ghaddafi Stadium; these matches proved that Pakistanis are starving for cricket. The Karachi stadium was overflowing with 40,000 spectators (the actual capacity is around 30,000). They actually had to stop the match for about 45 mins to get some of the spectators off the roof as the roof seemed unstable after so many fans running on it.
Cricket still flows in most of the Pakistanis veins just like blood. We love cricket with a passion.
Yet too many things have gone wrong to our cricket in recent times.. some of them chiefly:
1. Unstable political system affecting the economy which in turn lowering support-funding to enhance cricketing facilities in Pakistan.
2. Corruption (management): Whatever support funds are getting allocated to cricket are being misused by corrupt individuals like Dasti and Butt.
3. Corruption (cricketers): Many players have recently been accused of match-fixations. Its unproven yet very obvious that Malik and Rana were engaged in match fixing during the Champion's league. This hurts and even kills the morale and spirit of Pakistani cricket.
4. Incompetence (management): Aging, unprofessional and unimaginative PCB management not working hard enough to promote cricket on a professional and on a grass-root level.
5. Incompetence (leadership): Post Imran, Waseem handled the skipper duties at a satisfactory level. But post Inzamam, our cricket team has been lead by too many people who either didnt have leadership skills or weren't given enough time to prove their abilities. Shoaib Malik, Salman Butt, Yousuf, Younis, Afridi, Akmal, Razzaq etc many have been appointed as Captain or VC but the team never saw cohesion under them.
6. Terrorism: One big factor behind the complete absence of cricketing events is Pakistan's security situation due to growing terrorism. It became worse after the attack on Sri Lankan team near Liberty Chowk Lahore last year.
7. Money: Too many of our better players started focusing more on money than on cricket. The emergence of IPL and ICL really killed the orthodox cricketing skills of a lot of our cricketers who lost their ability to 'rotate the strike' and 'play big innings' as they focused primarily on the (Chhakkay Maro!) T20 format. Thats the reason we havent won a test in ages not even against teams like NZ.
8. Indiscipline (On the field): Pakistani players have embarrassed their nation too many times with their indisciplinary acts on the field. This includes sledging, ball tampering, poor fielding efforts, 'selfish' batting etc
9. Indiscipline (off the field): Though what a cricketer does off the field is none of our business as the only thing we should be concerned about is his on-field cricketing abilities, yet sometimes the off-field activites not only ruins the name of Pakistani cricket, but it gives cricket itself a bad name. Players involved in charges of rape or carrying drugs would be prime examples.
I think one way to save cricket in Pakistan is a strong emphases on the above mentioned problems that have put our cricket in dire straits today.
