Veteran Pakistani cricket journalist Abdul Majeed Bhatti, whose life is closely tied to the high and low moments of his country's cricket journey, shows no surprise regarding the current slump in Pakistani cricket.
Bhatti, aged 63, covered the news of the passing of then-Pakistan head coach Bob Woolmer during the ICC ODI World Cup 2007. During that same period, he himself became a subject of suspicion in the eyes of global media. Throughout his forty-year career as a sports writer and commentator, Bhatti witnessed clashes of ego between two of Pakistan's greatest cricket icons—Imran Khan and Javed Miandad, as well as the rivalry between legendary players Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.
Despite personal disagreements, all of them contributed to Pakistan becoming one of the most exciting teams to watch in the 1980s and 1990s. However, in recent years, Pakistan has rarely shown impressive results. Once a factory of world-class talent, Pakistan now struggles to assemble a squad of 11 worthy players for Test match competition.
In baseball cricket, the team is still capable of repelling any strong side, but in red-ball matches, the lack of squad depth has been fully exposed. For Bhatti, the recent defeat against England, where seven players were sent home and the head and bowling coaches were sacked mid-series due to poor performance, seemed inevitable.
He questions: why is Pakistan at the bottom of the Test cricket table, having lost 11 out of 14 matches abroad since 2023 and heavily relying on players who score points at home? And why can a country that produced such great cricketers as Imran Khan, Hanif Mohammad, Fazal Mahmood, Wasim Akram, Javed Miandad, Zaheer Abbas, Abdul Qadir, Insamul Haque, Waqar Younis, Muhammad Yusuf, Yunis Khan, Saqlain Mushtaq, Saeed Anwar, and Shoaib Akhtar not create a system for nurturing young talent?
Bhatti asserts that even in its golden days, Pakistan never had a solid player support system, yet they somehow achieved success. He told Khaleej Times: 'Look at the talents Pakistan had back then. They were essentially street cricketers. Imran Khan found people and brought them into the system. Javed Miandad saw Wasim Akram, and he was accepted.'
However, these precious finds from the streets were then polished in club cricket. 'They (Wasim and Waqar) had the advantage of playing in English club cricket. When Wasim Akram first appeared, he might not have even had proper spikes. But then he got a long-term contract in English club cricket. The same happened with Waqar Younis. Waqar got a contract with Glamorgan, and if I remember correctly, took about 100 wickets in one season,' he noted.
'This is a big difference I see between that era and today's cricket. In those days, players played four-day cricket, and that is where talent was honed. Today, this polishing process is absent because everything is being rushed. You select players for Test cricket based on red-ball performances, but they should actually play more red-ball cricket initially. Take Babar Azam. I don't know the exact statistics, but when was the last time he played in a club internal match? Maybe recently, but generally, they play too little. They save energy for T20 franchise leagues.'
