By Cricidiot

I went looking through the Pakistan Cricket Board’s previous work to see whether this week had a precedent. This was a mistake. It has several.

In 2009, the PCB withdrew Shoaib Akhtar from the World Twenty20 and issued a public statement saying he had genital viral warts. Most employers would have stopped at “unavailable”. The PCB supplied the diagnosis. When Shoaib later said he had considered suing over the disclosure, the board asked him to explain his comments. The diagnosis came from the board. The explanation was required from Shoaib.

In 2010, after Pakistan lost every international on a tour of Australia, the PCB banned or fined seven senior players. Within three months, an arbitrator had set aside Younis Khan’s indefinite ban, lifted Shoaib Malik’s one-year ban, quashed Shahid Afridi’s fine and reduced the Akmal brothers’ fines. This was not a retreat. It was a second advance in the opposite direction.

This March, ESPNcricinfo reported that every member of Pakistan’s T20 World Cup squad had been fined PKR5 million for poor performance, with the decision communicated after defeat by India. Twelve days later, a PCB spokesperson said nobody had been fined, called the reports gossip, and said the board was considering a formula to hold players financially accountable for performance. I do not know whether the fine existed, did not exist or was waiting for the formula. This is more conditions than a fine normally requires.

These episodes set a high bar. This week the PCB cleared it with room for a sightscreen.

Pakistan lost the first Test at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs. They then lost the second Test at Lord’s by 194 runs. These are what cricket people call heavy defeats and what I call a normal weekend. I accept that the standards are different when you are a national side rather than a man who once bowled a wide so wide it was signalled by a different umpire.

On Monday the PCB responded. It did four things, and I am going to take them in order, because the fourth was the question and the first three were the answer.

The Magnificent Seven

Step one: the board released seven players. “Released” is the board’s word. It is the word you use for hostages, pigeons and albums, and I have not been able to work out which of those the board had in mind. Pigeons, I hope. Pigeons come back.

The seven are Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, Ali Usman, Aamir Jamal, Muhammad Awais Zafar and Khurram Shahzad. You will remember the film. A village hires seven gunfighters to protect it, and three of them make it to the closing credits. Pakistan’s version has sent all seven home after two Tests, which is a worse survival rate than the film, and the film had bandits.

Some of the seven you can see coming. Four of them I want to look at more closely, starting with the one that makes the least sense.

Ali Usman took five wickets in England’s only innings at Headingley. It was his first five-wicket haul in Test cricket, and the first by an overseas spinner at that ground since Ashley Mallett in 1972, which means he did something at Headingley that nobody from outside England had managed in the lifetime of most of the selectors. The board’s response to this was to release him. I have read the MCC Laws of Cricket, or at least the front part, and nowhere in the front part does it say a five-for gets you a ticket home. I assume it is further in. The Laws are very long.

Salman Ali Agha captained Pakistan in a Test for the first time on 19 August, standing in for Babar Azam, who had been hit by a ball in the warm-up game. He made 25 runs in two innings, was left out at Lord’s, and on 31 August was released. Captain to ex-squad in twelve days.

Imam-ul-Haq strained his left calf fielding on the first day at Lord’s and did not bat in either innings. The board’s medical update said ten days of rest. The board’s squad update said go home. These are compatible, in the sense that home is a good place to rest. I just notice the order they came in.

Mohammad Rizwan made 41 in the second innings at Headingley and kept wicket at Lord’s while Mohammad Abbas took nine wickets. He was released too. Keep an eye on Rizwan and Imam. They are the only two of the seven the board has, so far, demanded a written explanation for, and neither of them has to write it.

The replacements

Step two: the board named seven replacements. Two of them, Saim Ayub and Abdullah Fazal, have played Test cricket: eight caps and two. The other five have not. In the film, the village at least hires people who have done this before. Pakistan’s village has hired five people who have never seen a bandit and asked them to start on 9 September at Edgbaston, which is where the bandits live.

Shahid Afridi asked: “Even the replacements make no sense — T20 players have been included for a Test match in England?” He asked it in the tone of a man who was not expecting an answer. This is the correct tone for the PCB. Everyone in Pakistan cricket learns it eventually, and most of them learn it this way.

Step three: the board released the head coach, Sarfaraz Ahmed, and the bowling coach, Umar Gul, and gave the Test team to Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke, who coach Pakistan’s white-ball sides. So in the same week that the complaint was T20 players being picked for a Test, the board handed the Test to the T20 coaches. This is either a rebuttal or a confession, and I have gone back and forth. In fairness to the board, a Test match is, if you do the arithmetic, eleven and a quarter T20s laid end to end, so this may be the most experienced they have ever felt. I have done the arithmetic. It is the one part of this week I am prepared to defend in writing.

The notice

Step four is the one I have been reading most slowly.

On the same Monday, the board sent a show-cause notice to its selectors, Aaqib Javed, Misbah-ul-Haq and Asad Shafiq, demanding a written explanation, within 24 hours, of why Mohammad Rizwan and Imam-ul-Haq had been picked for the tour in the first place. The notice cited a selection meeting on 2 June. The minutes of that meeting were submitted on 1 July. The board has therefore had two months to read why Rizwan was picked, and has now given the people who picked him one day to write it out again.

For readers unfamiliar with the form, a show-cause notice is a letter in which you are asked to show cause. In this case the selectors are being asked to justify, in one day, a decision the board has already overruled, so that the board can decide whether it was right to overrule it. If the selectors succeed, the board has sent home two players it should have kept. If they fail, the board has established that its own selection committee cannot pick a team, nine days before it needs one. I have not been able to find the outcome in which the board wins, and I have looked in both directions.

But here is the bit I keep going back to. The selection committee has four members. The fourth is Sarfaraz Ahmed, who joined the committee in March and became head coach in April. He was in the room when Rizwan was picked. The reported notices went to the other three, which makes sense, because you cannot show cause to a man you have already sent to the airport.

Asad Shafiq did get a notice. Asad Shafiq is also the batting coach. So the board has asked the batting coach to explain, in writing, why the batters were chosen, while keeping him on as the batting coach, and while removing the batters. He now has 24 hours to account for the old batters and nine days to prepare the new ones, and I imagine he is finding it hard to tell which is the punishment.

I imagine the exchange went roughly like this, and I want to stress that I am imagining it:

BOARD: Why did you pick Rizwan?
SELECTORS: You were there.
BOARD: Answer in writing.
SELECTORS: We did. You have had it since July.
BOARD: Answer again.
SELECTORS: Sarfaraz was there too.
BOARD: Sarfaraz has been released.
SELECTORS: Like a pigeon?
BOARD: Twenty-four hours.

Aaqib Javed went on Geo News this week and said, in effect, that he was one of four selectors and that the head coach and the captain had been part of the process. I believe him. That is what I was afraid of.

The resignation

Step five was not the board’s. By Tuesday, Misbah-ul-Haq had resigned from the selection committee, reportedly because nobody had consulted him about the seven replacements, which means a national selector found out who was in the national squad the same way I did, which is by reading about it. He also stepped down as batting consultant at the National Cricket Academy.

The board has not accepted his resignation. This is a thing I did not know a board could do. Misbah will serve a notice period instead, which means that a man the board has given 24 hours to explain his selections must now, technically, carry on selecting for it, against his stated wishes, while it decides whether he was ever any good at it. I have read that sentence back several times and it does not get shorter.

Ramiz Raja said Pakistan cricket had “hit a panic button.” I would like to gently push back. A panic button is pressed once. This was a panic keyboard. Rashid Latif asked: “who created this team? Those who created the team, ironically, are the ones who are punishing the team.” He is right, and he undersells it. The board is the prosecution, the defence and the principal witness in this case, and on Monday it sent the witness home. Mickey Arthur, who coached Pakistan for three years, which by the board’s standards makes him a founding father, said: “they constantly chop and change players, coaches and selectors, and there is no stability.” He said it in the tone.

So the running total, since the Lord’s Test ended on Sunday: seven players out, seven in, two coaches out, two in, three selectors under notice, one resignation not accepted, and one former head coach who was also a selector and is now neither, but might still be asked to explain himself if the board can find the address. England lead 2–0. The third Test starts at Edgbaston on 9 September. Nothing that happened this week changes that number, which is the one number in this story I understood on the first read.

What I understand

I would like to end on what I do understand, because it is short.

Pakistan lost two Test matches badly. Somebody had to be seen to do something. The board did four things, in that order, and then wrote to itself. Next week in Birmingham, a squad carrying five men who have never played a Test will walk out against an attack that has bowled Pakistan out four times in two matches, and be asked to fix in five days what the board has been trying to fix since April.

I hope they do. I mean that. Somebody in this story should get to finish something.

For the first time in my life I am fairly sure I am not the most confused person connected to Pakistan cricket, and I intend to enjoy that for as long as it lasts, which, on this week’s evidence, is about 24 hours. If the board would like that in writing, I will have the minutes to it within the month, which I understand is the usual turnaround.

Cricidiot is a profoundly ignorant student of the game and a CricTalk house columnist. He has never successfully explained the DLS method. He has never met anyone who can.