By Syed Mahmood Sherazi
Foreign Coaches and Pakistan Cricket Team The current administration of the Pakistan Cricket Team has once again contacted Mickey Arthur to coach the Pakistan Cricket Team. He says that instead of being a full time coach, as per the requirements of the modern age, becoming a director of a national cricket team through online coaching. Making Mickey Arthur the coach of the national cricket team did not bother former captain Misbah-ul-Haq, who called it a slap on the face of Pakistani cricket. It is not the first time that foreign coaches and players have been invited to coach the Pakistan cricket team. In the past, for coaching the national cricket team, the Pakistan Cricket Board invited foreign players to Pakistan for grooming the national team players for one or two days at a heavy fee. How effective the arrival of these foreign players to Pakistan was for the national cricket team is a separate debate. Recently Matthew Hayden, Shaun Tait and Vernon Philander have been associated with the national team as mentors and as a coach. Over the past 20 years, the reins of the national team have been less in the hands of local coaches and more in the hands of foreign coaches. Like local coaches, foreign coaches also go through periods of winning and losing. But no coach except the late Bob woolmer has been able to win both the hearts and minds of the players. There have certainly been conflicts between players and foreign coaches.For example, the current junior selection committee Head Kamran Akmal and his brother Umar Akmal had issues with Mickey Arthur, on which he also lashed out. If we go back to the distant past, the Pakistan cricket team played most of its cricket without coaches in the 1970s and 80s.1992 World Cup victory, which is also known as the rise of Pakistani cricket team, then the manager of the Pakistani cricket team, Intikhab Alam, was the coach of the national cricket team. In other words, during this period, the manager also performed the responsibilities of the coach. Ex-test cricketer Intikhab Alam has the highest coaching responsibility of the Pakistan cricket team, he has coached the Pakistan team a record 5 times in different periods, the team won the 1992 World Cup and the 2009 T20 World Cup under his coaching.In the late 90s, Mushtaq Mohammad, Haroon Rashid, Wasim Raja, Intikhab Alam and Javed Miandad were appointed as the national cricket team coach at different times, but none of them could stay with the team for long time. Sometimes the players were angry with the behavior of these coaches and sometimes the coaches were seen complaining about the behavior of the players. For this reason, before the 1999 World Cup, the then coach of the national cricket team, Javed Miandad, resigned from the post. Former captain Mushtaq Muhammad was named the coach of the national team just days before the World Cup and South African coach Richard Pybus was appointed as assistant coach to assist him.According to the Pakistan Cricket Board, the shortest tenured coach of Pakistan was Richard Pybus of South Africa, he coached the team for only 3 months, but then he was appointed as the coach of the team again in 2001. From 2001 to 2003, Richard Pybus was appointed as the coach of the Pakistan cricket team only three times at different occasions, but after the humiliating defeat in the 2003 World Cup, he was dismissed from the coaching.Former South African coach Bob Woolmer was the only Pakistan coach who made the players mentally and physically fit, but during his tenure, the national cricketers achieved historic victories against England, India and Sri Lanka. Bob Woolmer was associated with the Pakistan cricket team for three years. His sudden death during the 2007 World Cup had a huge impact on the national cricket team. After his death, Jeoff Lawson was appointed as the coach of the national cricket team in October 2007. He took over the coaching duties for a year and bid farewell to the team in October 2008.
After that, Dav Whatmore was appointed as the coach of the Pakistan national cricket team in 2012. The Pakistan team won the Asia Cup for the second time under Watmore coaching. But apart from that, he could not accomplish any significant feat.
Dav Watmore was the coach of the national cricket team for two years and in 2014 he was removed and Waqar younis became the coach of the national cricket team.
In 2016, Mickey Arthur was appointed as the coach of the national cricket team after Waqar Younis. The most successful era was that of Mickey Arthur in which the Pakistan national team won the ICC Champions Trophy 2017, finished first in Test cricket and won their first ever Test series in the West Indies. Mickey Arthur was sacked after the 2019 World Cup when the Pakistan team missed out on a place in the semi-finals only because of their net run rate.
After Arthur, Misbah-ul-Haq, who was the captain during his tenure, was made the head coach of the Pakistan team. Before the T20 World Cup last year, Misbah-ul-Haq left the coaching of the national cricket team, after which foreign players Australia’s Matthew Hayden, Vernon Philander and Shaun Tait were given the responsibilities of mentoring and coaching the national team.
Now after the end of their contract, the board has once again contacted various foreign coaches and players including Mickey Arthur, which is being criticized by the former players of the Pakistan cricket team. On the other hand, the board’s position is that whenever a former Pakistani player has been given the responsibilities of a coaching, differences in the team have been highlighted, according to Pakistan Cricket board to avoid which a foreign coach is the best solution.
