Hashan Tillakaratne on the Track of Truth

Former Sri Lankan captain Hashan Tillakaratne has said that match fixing is in vogue in Sri Lankan cricket since 1992. He said that he will disclose the names of Sri Lankan match fixers very soon. He said that though I am not 100% sure that the final of ICC World Cup 2011 was fixed, but some decisive changes made by Sri Lankan team management before the final made the issue doubtful.

Infact the attitude of senior Sri Lankan players towards money aim league IPL is a reflection of the Hashan Tillakaratne concerns. To me playing for his country should be the first priority of a professional player, but when Sri Lankan board and government called the player to join Camp before the tour of England, most of Sri Lankan players showed their cold response in doing so. They were not agreed to leave IPL and join the camp for the preparation of important tour of England. Even on one hand, attacking bowler Lasith Malenga declared himself injured for the tour of England and on the other hand, he was playing IPL matches continually. When after his ambiguous stance Sri Lankan board called him back for restoration of fitness, he even announced retirement. This attitude of Malenga showed that how Sri Lankan players are interesting in playing IPL. According to board instructions Sri Lankan players were due to leave IPL before 5th May but now because of their cold response and influence from BCCI Sri Lankan board allowed them up to mid of May. These players will not join the camp which is an essential part of preparation before any tour for every international team. Even most of them will not play warm up match. Coming one step forward former Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara

 has demanded space for IPL in ICC future tour programme for avoiding clash with board. By this he has indirectly accepted clash with his board in present and indicated clash with board in future due to IPL This story is enough for understanding the priorities of Sri Lankan cricketers.

So, therefore, the blames of Hashan Tillakaratne should not be called rubbish blindly as one of Sri Lankan minister has done.  Even the behavior of West Indian Chris Gayle is out of box. He was dropped for just 2 matches as strategy by his board but he made it excuse and withdrawn himself from international tour and joined IPL. This attitude is enough for understanding the priorities of players. It means that because of available option of IPL, players will now dictate their boards. By adopting this type of attitude, cricket fans can now identify money loving and professional cricketers clearly. On one side there is Ravi Bopara who ignored money aim IPL because of preparation for tour of Sri Lanka and on the other side there are Sri Lankan players who ignored preparation camp for international tour because of IPL.

To those players who were playing for money illegally in past, IPL has provided open field to make it legal. You can ignore your international tours; you can make some other excuses to join IPL for earning money without any fear, because the dispute with your board will be handled by richest board of cricket BCCI as it did in the case of Sri Lankan player.

Was it a reward of performance of ICC world cup 2011 Final for Sri Lankan?

Afridi - Captain or Manager?

“A man is a leader when he starts thinking out of the box.  A man who just manage cannot be called a leader”.

It was a time when Younis Khan was Captain of Pakistan cricket team and  Pakistan cricket fans were thinking that we found a  good leader after Imran Khan. But he could not deliver because of his strict principles and emotional attitude. After him, players like Mohammad Yousaf and  Salman Butt  were given responsibilities of captaincy but all were failed for different reason.

After appointment of Shahid Khan Afridi, hopes for betterment were again alive in the minds of Pakistan cricket fans, they were expecting him as a real leader.  But if we look at the captaincy record of Shahid Afridi, he could not deliver according the wishes of fans. He doesn’t know   how and when to take a decision. He just fallows the plan made by team management. As a captain you have to take decisions according to current game situation on the field. But in some cases when people were expecting him to take Power play, to change the bowlers, to change the batting order and to change even his own batting number, he act like a computer and continue the strategy made by the team management.  Up to now, he failed to take his own decisions according to the situation; therefore, he must rethink regarding his captaincy strategy. People are expecting aggressive captaincy from him, but he likes to play defensive cricket as captain. Now look at the tour of West Indies, selection committee has given him young talent to test them, but because of losing fear he is not giving these new players enough chances. Selection committee has completed his job, its now Afridi who has to complete his responsibilities.

What was need for playing with Misbah in the T20.  West Indies has introduced more then 5 new players yet. In the ODIS again no good decision were taken either in team selection and neither on the field. So he must do the following in upcoming matches:-

Try all new players in next three ODIs as well as in Test

Replace  Misbah in next upcoming  ODIs

Let complete full quota of overs from new bowlers

Try more young batsmen and change the batting line as experiment for future.

Written By: Farid Khan (Cricket Analyst)

Weaknesses of Pakistan Cricket Team

Pakistan is being in Cricket since Pakistan came into existence. If we look into the strength of Pakistan team, no doubt it is bowling. Pakistan is rich of bowling talent naturally. Pakistan has produced big names in all types of bowering. In fast bowling Fazal Mehmood, Sarfaraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Waseem Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar have performed extra ordinary. Presently Umer Gul is on peek and some new talented bowlers are in queue in domestic cricket.  In slow bowling, legendary Abdul Qadir, Saqlin Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed did well in past and presently Saeed Ajmal and Abdul Rehman are on peek.

Although Pakistan has produced big names like Mushtaq Muhammad, Sadiq Muhammad, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad and Inzamam Ul Haq, but most of the times batting performance of Pakistan has remained inconsistence. Big names of batting in Pakistan cricket remain inconsistent, no body can believe on them .

Now look at PCB,  team is weak in batting and they have hired coach’s for bowling. It is not a rocket science to understand, PCB has done so many worst decision in past and in present, because they are not accountable to any authority. The plan of PCB should be:-

PCB should hire a full time professional batting coach.

PCB should make all batsmen accountable for their performance. Let do not allow the lazy and irresponsible players to remain in team. Only those should be given chances who maintain all time good average in batting.

PCB should discourage favoritism. After considering a batsman for reasonable matches, in case of failure, PCB should give chance to another one.   

PCB should consider only those who consistently maintain good average with good strike rate.

Written by: Farid Khan (Cricket Analyst)

ICC Future Tours Programme - 2012

MONTH	COUNTRIES	VENUE
DEC 2011-JAN 2012	SRI LANKA TOUR TO SOUTH AFRICA 2011 (3 TEST AND 5 ODI)	SOUTH AFRICA
DEC 2011-JAN 2012	BIG BASH LEAGUE (31 T20)	AUSTRALIA
DEC 2011-FEB 2012	INDIA TOUR TO AUSTRALIA 2011 (4 TEST AND 2 T20)	AUSTRALIA
JAN- FEB 2012	PAKISTAN VS ENGLAND 2012 (3 TEST, 4 ODI AND 3 T20)	UAE
JAN- FEB 2012	ZIMBABWE TOUR TO NEW ZEALAND 2012 (1 TEST, 3 ODI    AND 2 T20)	NEW ZEALAND
FEB- MAR 2012	AUSTRALIA TRI SERIES 2012 (8-11 ODI)	AUSTRALIA
FEB- MAR 2012	SOUTH AFRICA TOUR TO NEW ZEALAND 2012 (3 T20, 3 ODI AND 3 TEST)	NEW ZEALAND
MAR- APR 2012	PAKISTAN  TOUR TO INDIA 2012 (3 TEST AND 5 ODI)	INDIA
MAR  2012	ASIA CUP 2012 (6 ODI AND 1 FINAL)	BANGLADESH
MAR- APR 2012	SRI LANKA TOUR TO BANGLADESH 2012 (5 ODI )	BANGLADESH
MAR- APR 2012	AUSTRALIA TOUR TO WEST INDIES 2012 (5 ODI, 2 T20 AND 3 TEST)	WEST INDIES
MAR- APR 2012	ENGLAND TOUR TO SRI LANKA 2012 (2 TEST)	SRI LANKA
APR- MAY 2012	IPL 2012 (74 IPLT20)	INDIA
APR- MAY 2012	PAKISTAN VS BANGLADESH 2012 (2 TEST AND 3 ODI)	UAE
MAY- JUN 2012	WEST INDIES TOUR TO ENGLAND 2012 (3 TEST, 3 ODI AND 1 T20)	ENGLAND
MAY- JUN 2012	PAKISTAN TOUR TO SRI LANKA 2012 (3 TEST, 5 ODI AND 2 T20 )	SRI LANKA
JUN- JUL 2012	AUSTRALIA TOUR TO ENGLAND 2012 (6 ODI)	ENGLAND
JUN- AUG 2012	NEW ZEALAND TOUR TO WEST INDIES 2012 (3 TEST, 5 ODI AND 2 T20)	WEST INDIES
JUL- AUG 2012	INDIA TOUR TO SRI LANKA 2012 (3 TEST)	SRI LANKA
JUL- SEP 2012	SOUTH AFRICA TOUR TO ENGLAND 2012 (3 TEST, 5 ODI AND 3 T20)	ENGLAND
AUG- SEP 2012	BANGLADESH TOUR TO ZIMBABWE 2012 (2 TEST, 3 ODI AND 2 T20)	ZIMBABWE
AUG- SEP 2012	NEW ZEALAND IN INDIA 2012 (3 TEST)	INDIA
AUG- SEP 2012	PAKISTAN VS AUSTRALIA 2012 (5 ODI AND 1 T20 MATCH)	UAE
SEP- OCT 2012	T20 WORLD CUP 2012 (27 T20 )	SRI LANKA
OCT 2012	CHAMPIONS LEAGUE T20 2012 (23 T20)	N/A

Pakistan's Future Captain

It is time for PCB to think about young Captain as part of future plan. Although Shahid Afridi is doing well on the field, but the nomination of Misbah as Vice captain is questionable because his career is on the end due to age factor and future planning requires young names.

At the moment, two players who can be consider as next captain, one is Muhammad Hafeez and other is  Asad Shafiq. Both are young, talented and matching wining players and they have proved themselves on many occasion.

1^st choice

Muhammad Hafeez is opening batsman and good off spin bowler, Hafeez was the one who was picked by Pakistan’s selectors during revival process in 2003.  Although he is known as professor in dressing room because of his good match analysis in the dressing room, but on the field having all the capability he is not succeeded according to his reputation. He has every shot on his inventory but it has observed that most of the time he got out after 30s in crucial matches. The only weakness in his bating is his lack of concentration for long time. If he succeeded to control his nerves on crucial times he can really became match winner player as well as successful captain.  So his nomination as captain well be a good idea as future planning.

2n Choice

Although Asad Shafiq is young and these are starting days of his career, but the maturity he shown on the field during batting indicated that he has the ability to bear responsibility of  captaincy.  He is the one who knows the value of his wicket and has never thrown his wicket by his own mistakes. He likes to play according to his reputation and knows the art of staying on the field. So, nomination of Asad Shafiq as vice captain can help Pakistan in future.

Written By:  Farid Khan (Cricket Analyst)

2nd ODI Pakistan vs Westindies

In the 2^nd ODI between Pakistan and West indies, Pakistan won the toss and elected  to ball first, this was understandable because in the first ODI Pakistan snatched a simple 8 wicket victory by bowling first. West Indian batting display as expected was poor once again, they pasted just 220 on the board at the end of the 50^th over but that too had some supporting runs from the tail enders. The highest scorer from West Indian side was Simmons he gathered good 51 runs. Bravo got to double figures  but  was unable to build a long inning, he scored 17. Perhaps the highest partnership that the West Indian team had in that match was of 36 runs which again tell the story.

Pakistani bowlers bowled very well. Each of the bowler that bowled took wickets except of unlucky Junaid Khan who bowled well but did not get a wicket.

Afridi, Wahab, Hafeez and Saeed got 2 Wickets each while the new talent Hamaad was able to get a single wicket.

Unlike West Indies Pakistan started very confidently when they came to bat, Hafeez hit a six and a four of  two consecutive bowls of West Indies best bowler Roach. The man who had been facing a lot of criticism for last 5 months went on to score 102 runs and showed his talent, and for this Ahmed Shahzad was declared  “man of the match”. Other’s supported him, Hafeez scored good 32 and the old Misbah scored 41 to confirm his place in the coming matches. With all these contribution Pakistan secured a 7 wicket victory over West Indies in 48 overs.

But above all still Pakistan did not give any chance to Usman salaudin.