The good, the bad and the ugly — the volatile story of Pakistani cricket

Shaheen Shah Afridi of Pakistan celebrates the wicket of Jake Fraser-McGurk of Australia during game two of the Men's ODI series between Australia and Pakistan at Adelaide Oval on November 08, 2024 in Adelaide, Australia. (Photo by Mark Brake/Getty Images)

By Mike Wills

8 Dec 2024

The side veers wildly between stellar and abysmal performances, so there’s no telling what South African fans will see in the coming weeks.

The Pakistan cricket team arrives this week for a South African tour that includes three T20 Internationals, three One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and two Tests.

The question for the Proteas and fans alike will be: which Pakistan will show up? Throughout their 72-year cricketing history, the Pakistanis have been the most bipolar of sporting sides, swinging between the imperious and the awful.

This is their recent track record: swept 2-0 in a home Test series in October by Bangladesh (who were then trounced in their own backyard by the Proteas).

They then conceded a single innings of 823 runs while losing the first Test at home against England, before dropping their three best-known players and demolishing the Bazball visitors in the next two Tests on the back of a 38-year-old left-arm spinner called Noman Ali.

Then they went to Australia and won an ODI series there for the first time in 22 years before getting belted 3-0 in the T20I series.

Currently, they are spending a fortnight in Bulawayo, where they have experienced mixed fortunes in white-ball games against Zimbabwe.

In this period, they have demoted their Test coach, former Aussie quick Jason Gillespie, and parted ways with Gary Kirsten after only six months as their white-ball coach.

Kirsten joins Richard Pybus, Bob Woolmer (who died in Jamaica while with Pakistan at the 2007 World Cup, where they had already humiliatingly lost to Ireland) and Mickey Arthur as South Africa-connected coaches on the Pakistani conveyor belt this millennium.

Only Chelsea and Kaiser Chiefs go through coaches faster.

Deep talent

So, it’s anyone’s guess how this tour will go because mercurial and fickle are limp words for this lot. And it has always been so.

Why? Well, it certainly isn’t, and never has been, a case of a lack of talent in a population of 240 million. In the 1950s, after the partition of India, Tests in Pakistan – which also encompassed what is now Bangladesh until 1971 – were played on coir matting where Fazal Mahmood’s cutters were unplayable and the legendary Hanif Mohammad was simply immovable (he once batted for 16 hours in a Test).

Pakistan won at least one Test in their first series against India, England, Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies. They were never easy beats and they churned out stars.

With the bat – the majestic Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Inzimam-Ul-Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, Younis Khan and, recently, Babar Azam.

Bowlers – elite spinners such as Intikhab Alam, Abdul Qadir, Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Muhammad (not to mention Imran Tahir, purloined by the Proteas after he was surplus to requirements in Karachi). And some of the best quicks ever to play the game in Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar and Shaheen Shah Afridi.

Pakistan cricket Shaheen Shah Afridi of Pakistan celebrates the wicket of Jake Fraser-McGurk of Australia during the ODI series at the Adelaide Oval on 8 November 2024. (Photo: Mark Brake / Getty Images)

The risk in explaining the side’s inconsistency is stereotyping. Words like temperamental, stubborn, mercenary, independent, undisciplined and selfish get thrown around.

The sport’s administration has been intensely political and often diabolical, meaning that selection is capricious and both money and conditions for the players have been issues of constant contention. The latter might explain why there has also been a constant undercurrent of corruption and malfeasance in the Pakistani game.

Hansie Cronje is the poster child of cricket bribery, but several Pakistani players have been exposed down the years for match-fixing in various forms.

And, in terms of dishonesty, nothing tops the Wanderers Test in 1998, which was delayed, amid globally terrible publicity for South Africa, because two Pakistani players claimed they had been injured in a mugging in a Sandton street.

Credible reports later established a murky story of nightclubs, call girls, pimps and bouncers (not the cricketing kind).

There is one important caveat in this shady narrative. When Pakistani fast bowlers pioneered the use of reverse swing in the Eighties and Nineties, it was common cause in the rest of the cricketing world that they were somehow cheating with ball tampering to achieve it.

When it turned out to be the product of genuine skill and ball management, and once everyone else had mastered it, the shameful slurs were soon forgotten.

The turbulent national political context has not helped Pakistani cricket. The Sri Lankan team bus was attacked by terrorists in Lahore in 2009. Six players were injured and eight other people died, and no international team ventured back until the gutsy Sri Lankans returned 10 years later. In the interim, Pakistan’s “home” series were played in the United Arab Emirates.

The bitter political rivalry with India also precludes regular fixtures between the subcontinental giants and denies Pakistani players lucrative opportunities in the Indian Premier League.

When the sides do play each other, usually at World Cups, Pakistan versus India carries obsessional nationalistic weight to the point where it always seems to be, as the elegant cricket scribe Tom Eaton noted, “a missed leg-side stumping away from nuclear war”.

Backing youth

One notable phenomenon of Pakistani cricket is their willingness to throw very young players into action. Hasan Raza was allegedly 14 when he made his debut against Zimbabwe in 1996 (there is some doubt about his exact date of birth), and six other players have played Tests before their 17th birthdays. Wasim Akram was only 17 on debut and his lethal partner, Waqar Younis, was only 18.

Pakistan’s cricketing high point was winning the 1992 World Cup. It was a characteristic triumph. They only managed one win in their first five pool games (including a loss to Kepler Wessels’ South Africa at the Gabba, where Andrew Hudson and Adrian Kuiper starred) before squeezing out just enough points to qualify for the semis in a distant fourth place.

They then ran hot in beating cohosts New Zealand in Auckland and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the final.

The victory is often ascribed to the strong and charismatic leadership of dashing all-rounder Imran Khan, one of the few Pakistani skippers ever to assert genuine discipline on his players.

Khan later went into politics and became prime minister. He is now in jail on a range of highly politicised charges.

Somehow, his turbulent tale sums up the volatile nature of both Pakistan and its national sport. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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Deep talent

Backing youth