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Pakistan have a new captain. This, admittedly, evokes the same response as learning Watford have hired another manager. A lack of surprise to go with, um, wait, hasn’t he done this before? And so it goes that Shaheen Afridi, the left-arm quick now in charge of the 50-over side, was sacked as their Twenty20 captain last year after only one series at the helm.
Pakistani cricket being volatile is just another Tuesday. Go back 15 years and you’ll find a spot-fixing scandal that sent three star players to prison, unfolding while they were unable to host international matches, the exile prompted by a terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka men’s team in Lahore. In the middle of that they found time to win a World Cup.
But the instability has been particularly worrying since the men’s team reached the final of the T20 World Cup in Australia three years ago. Five full-time captains, 10 head coaches/team directors across formats and countless selectors have followed. Four men have headed up the Pakistan Cricket Board. The current chair, Mohsin Naqvi, called for “sports and politics to be kept apart” during the tensions with India at the Asia Cup. Naqvi is also – wait for it – the country’s interior minister.
Results have been poor amid the churn in personnel. The red-ball side finished last in the last World Test Championship; the white-ball squads have failed to reach the knockouts of the last three global tournaments. Babar Azam’s straight drives are R-rated but he hasn’t hit an international century in more than two years. It’s been a while since a fresh, whippy, Hollywood-smile teenage quick came from nowhere to threaten world domination, as per local tradition.
Pakistan finished bottom in the recently concluded Women’s World Cup, not helped by a swirling mess of geopolitics and tragicomic organisation by the International Cricket Council. They suffered three washouts playing in wet-season Colombo, the location for their fixtures while other teams travelled to India (the two rivals will not play at each other’s venues). As Pakistan lost their other four matches, it was hard to not think about the PCB’s stated desire a few years ago to launch a domestic women’s T20 league that would boost local standards. Plans for a 13-match tournament shrank to three exhibition matches in 2023, with a handful of England internationals involved. Nothing has followed since that experiment. Something promising was lost in the administrative chaos.
The cross-border relationship, a lopsided one, is damaging the entire international order. The Champions Trophy this year, the first major tournament hosted by Pakistan in 29 years, was no heartwarming homecoming. India’s refusal to travel – after Pakistan visited them for the 2023 World Cup – allowed their already brilliant team to set up shop in Dubai, where they developed their own home advantage and triumphed. It set a depressing precedent. Meanwhile, Pakistan internationals remain locked out of the Indian Premier League. This absence, long normalised, shows in the declining returns of their T20 side, their players denied an education that the world’s best take so much from.
But as IPL owners continue to establish more satellite teams, contributing to the sense that Pakistan players are being ostracised in tournaments around the world, the PCB deserves criticism, too. Habitually pulling its players out of overseas competitions with little notice – Naseem Shah was a victim of this at the Hundred last year – has hurt the appeal of signing them. “No one has got any confidence of taking a Pakistan player and them being able to turn up,” says one insider involved in player recruitment for franchise teams, calling the PCB’s actions “bonkers”.
So where do we go for salvation? To a competition that, for all its flaws, appears increasingly vital in the age of the Big Three. Pakistan will not face India or Australia in the ongoing WTC cycle. Their toughest challenge away from home is three Tests against England next summer but winning at least one of those is certainly feasible.
At home they have got themselves a template, one they turned to last year after Harry Brook and Joe Root pulverised them in Multan to put up a total in excess of 800. That prompted a move to big-spinning decks, with Pakistan rallying to win that series. They began their 2025-27 campaign by welcoming South Africa last month and a victory in the first Test really should have been followed by another in the second. But the defending WTC champions turned 235 for eight in their first innings to 404 all out. Simon Harmer’s offies took care of the rest.
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The series still highlighted some unlikely heroes. Noman Ali, 39, was playing club cricket in Bradford a few years ago. He has 50 wickets in his last six Tests at 16.04. Beholden to the magic of left-arm twirl, Pakistan handed a debut to Asif Afridi, 38, in the second Test. He obliged with a six-wicket haul.
Shaheen secured the first Test with a salivating burst of reverse swing, and while their batting lineup does not inspire, Babar still holds the potential for greatness. Predictions are futile amid the dysfunction, especially when the PCB has just announced Shan Masood, the Test captain, as a consultant for international cricket and players’ affairs (the press release offers no details of what this role entails). But there is a practical path to a final in England, setting up a chance to replicate the victories enjoyed by New Zealand and South Africa. The red pill keeps the heart beating for now.
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
