Azhar Ali: Pakistan Cricket Cannot Change in a Year
Former Test star Azhar Ali warns Pakistan's cricket crisis runs deeper than one bad tour after mass axing of players and coaching staff.
Azhar Ali played 97 Tests for Pakistan and scored 19 centuries, including one triple hundred, and was part of the side that rose from the Lord's spot-fixing scandal in 2010 to the top of the Test rankings six years later. He now watches a tour of England that has fallen apart within a week, and says the collapse goes beyond one bad series.
Two heavy defeats, at Headingley and Lord's, led to seven players being dropped from Pakistan's touring party on Monday and the head coach, Sarfaraz Ahmed, moved aside. Shahid Afridi called it "the most shocking decision ever." Misbah-ul-Haq resigned as a selector in protest.
«People used to say you could expect anything from Pakistan – that any team could turn up on any given day and either be 46 all out or win from nowhere,».
Pakistan sit bottom of the World Test Championship table for the second cycle running and have lost 15 of their past 20 matches. Azhar said the sport at home needs "proper care and a vision that gives hope to a nation on the brink of losing their appetite," and warned that without changes, the team risks losing its remaining support altogether.
Azhar's own career, including spells at Somerset and Worcestershire, ran through Pakistan's last recovery from crisis. His comparison between that turnaround and the current run of results points to a team he sees repeating its worst patterns without the unpredictability that once gave it a way out.
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