Experienced ?keeper duly required for Australia, India tours
Experienced ?keeper duly required for Australia, India tours
By Waheed Khan
KARACHI: With make-or-break Test tours to Australia and India lined up for the national team, Pakistan cricket is facing a predicament over the selection of an experienced wicketkeeper-batsman for these high-profile series.
Following the steady decline in form shown by Moin Khan in the last few months which led to his being dropped for the final Test against Sri Lanka in Karachi, the selectors and the team management have now pinned their hopes on 22-year-old Kamran Akmal. He did a commendable job behind the stumps but struggled with the bat in Karachi but it is obvious he is one for the future.
But it is also clear that he is not the man who is the answer to the prayers of the selectors, captain Inzamam-ul-Haq and coach Bob Woolmer to have a dependable wicketkeeper-batsman for two very tough tours (Australia and India).
With six Tests and 13 One-day Internationals lined up, one does not have to be very smart to figure out that Pakistan will require someone very experienced and battle hardened with previous touring experience to keep and bat consistently well in the hard-playing conditions of Australia and in front of full stadiums in India.
Akmal may have shown enough potential to convince everyone that he has potential but to expect him to do this in Australia and India would be suicidal and unfair on him. One or two dropped catches and brittle batting display in pressure situations could all have terrible consequences for the team and for him.
The sensible choice would be to send Akmal as the number two with someone experienced being given the task of keeping wickets. It would allow him (Akmal) to mature further to improve his game.
And with Moin badly struggling for form and now requiring to first play in domestic cricket to find form over a consistent period of matches, the rational approach should be to recall the 35-year-old Rashid Latif.
Moin, who has given yeoman services to Pakistan cricket, has got more than his fair share of chances since his comeback last year against South Africa to be the number one choice as team?s wicketkeeper-batsman. Sadly, he has struggled badly with both bat and gloves and one doubts if anyone else would have been given so many chances to find his form.
When Rashid made a comeback to international cricket in June 2001 after a gap of three years, he knew he had to deliver to justify his place as a replacement of Moin.
And he justified this in unequivocal terms and kept on delivering before skipping the Test series against South Africa last year himself and paving the way for another return by Moin.
Rashid is presently leading Karachi Blues in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy with great interest and seriousness and has been keeping marvellously besides batting sensibly. He has made it clear to everyone that he is dead serious about making a comeback to the senior team before finally retiring from the game.
In ideal conditions with Rashid playing and performing well he should be an automatic choice to take over the number one position in the team. Because even chief selector Wasim Bari privately admits that after himself Rashid has consistently remained the best keeper for Pakistan.
But then the big picture is that when it comes to Rashid it is never an ideal situation. The grapevine is that Inzamam is not in favour of having him in the team and he is backed in this argument by Yousuf Youhana. Their grouse is that they feel Rashid can?t be trusted to be a team man and he caused problems for the team when he made wild allegations about the fourth match of the one-day series against India being fixed in April this year. One cannot blame them for feeling this way about Rashid and the consequent reluctance on part of the Board or selectors to deal with him again. Because unfortunately Rashid, being a truly eccentric character, has gone and shot himself in the foot many a times in the past and caused problems for himself.
This can best be judged by the fact that when he was captain last year he insisted on the selection of Inzamam after he was ignored by the selectors for six months. Things were fine between the two even after Rashid was banned for five matches for taking a contentious catch in the Multan Test against Bangladesh, something that did damage his credibility to an extent. He also didn?t have any problems when Inzamam was made the captain.
But then out of the blue came the allegations in the India series. “Inzamam and Youhana made the point to the selectors that whenever he (Rashid) is not in the team he does such things,” says one insider.
But to put the record straight Rashid even wrote to the ICC and warned it that international bookmakers were still trying to corrupt players through fancy fixing when he was captain on the England tour last year. He was also captain when in his report to the Board after the Bangladesh series, he mentioned the names of two players whom he felt were being targeted by bookmakers who wanted to corrupt them. He was vice captain and an influential member of the side when in 1995 he first blew the whistle on the match-fixing racket.
So the argument that he only makes these allegations when he is not in the team, does not hold truth. But it is also a fact that he has hurt his own credibility by not substantiating the suspicions he raised during the India series.
One can understand why Inzamam and other players are angry with him. They would have expected him to support them in such a high-profile series instead of trying to disturb them.
But then honest people are known to be eccentric in their character and it is no different with Rashid who has spurned several attempts by bookmakers to buy him off. In this background one can forgive the selectors for being in an awkward situation despite wanting Rashid back and knowing he is necessary for the tours to Australia and India. So basically it is a catch-22 situation for Pakistan cricket. So where does this leave Pakistan cricket?
The one solution should be a pow pow meeting between Rashid, Inzamam, Woolmer, Youhana, other senior players mediated by the PCB Chairman. The purpose should be to broker peace between Rashid and Inzamam and convince Inzamam that Rashid needs to go to Australia and India and to also make it clear to Rashid that he has to be on his best behaviour and not cause problems for the team management. There is no guarantee something positive will come out in such a meeting but it is something which needs to be done by mutual well-wishers of Pakistan cricket because sometimes the cure for a snake bite is found in the snake?s venomous poison itself.
Because there is no arguing that Rashid Latif is and remains the best keeper in the country and he can be a very dependent batsman when he is playing with heart and for the team as he has done in the past.
There are numerous instances in Pakistan cricket where more serious differences among senior players have been worked out in the larger interest of the team so why not another brokered peace deal if it is necessary for Pakistan cricket.
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