Senile Chairman, Apathetic Team - What a Great Combination !

Pakistan fell to an ignominious defeat yesterday to the least favoured major team in the tournament. Let us be very clear, it wasn't England's sterling performance that won them this match, it was Pakistan's utterly pathetic display. No less than 4 catches were dropped and close to 25 runs given by the most clumsily butterfingered display by any team in a major cricket tournament ever.

To cap it off, Pakistan produced the most spineless batting since Sunil Gavaskar decided to go slow from ball one against England in the 1975 World Cup because by his estimation the target of 340 odd was impossible to achieve.

Here are some questions I have for the so-called team management, a misnomer if ever there was one. (How can a team of people with the sloth like, utterly untalented, completely useless Intikhab Alam at its helm be called management?)

1. Why did Younis Khan decide to bowl on a belter of a wicket, knowing full well that Pakistan can't chase their own tails let alone a decent score?
2. Why was M. Aamir played instead of Sohail Tanvir?
3. Why was Yasir Arafat, the team all-rounder, made to open the bowling?
4. Why was Shoaib Malik given an over before the specialist spinners in the team had been given a chance?
5. Why is it that even with the presence of a long list of coaches can the Pakistani fielders not field to save their lives?
6. What is the bowling coach good for if every bowler is going to bowl no balls and give away free hits (including the spinners?)
7. What possessed Younis Khan and Shoaib Malik to take singles for 5 overs when chasing 185 in 20?
8. When it was clear that defeat was inevitable why was there no inclination to make the margin of defeat as low as possible so that a win against Holland could conceivably let Pakistan through? Or do they know that they're not capable of even beating Holland?
9. What good is Misbah-ul-Haq at #7?
10. Why was Younis Khan still laughing like a moron after the worst performance by Pakistan in a long long time? Does he not care? Should a person like that be at the helm? Should a person like that even be in the team?

There is no doubt that the Pakistan cricket team is a reflection of the country it belongs to.

The chairman of the PCB is a senile geriatric about whom close aides joke that he often forgets in mid-sentence what he was talking about. A couple of days ago he publicly announced that Imran Nazir would never play for Pakistan again because he'd shown dissent to an umpire in the domestic T20. Disregarding the fact that the chairman PCB does not have the power to do anything of the sort, it is laughable for the chairman of a board whose players have been caught doping and smuggling contraband but are still playing, to imply anything of the sort.
This is the same chairman under whom a visiting cricket team was attacked by terrorists because the PCB did not provide adequate security. Ijaz Butt then had the gall to accuse one of the victims, Chris Broad, of lying and claimed that the security for the Sri Lankan team was of Presidential level. He also obviously refused to step down, giving the logical reason that Zardari the Patron-in-chief of the PCB still had complete faith in him !

Ijaz Butt's incompetencies will take more than a column to narrate, suffice to say that this Country, this Captain and this team deserve this Chairman and vice versa.