***Cricket World Cup - 2003***

[Saad Hasan]

I dont think our primary concern is fielding, nor should it be, especially when we fail to put a decent total on board or lack the ability to even chase a modest total. Cricket is quite different from baseball, which puts a high premium on fielding, pitching and hitting are only secondary. In cricket, its the other way around fielding is only secondary to having skills in batting and bowling...

If fielding was the real reason to exclude Saeed then the mgmt. should have started by dropping Razzaq who made the most inexcusable error by dropping Tendulkar and secondly, substitutes and 12th man can always fill in fielding......

[uazim]

Wonderful batting by Australian won them another world cup. R. Ponting played a wonderful inning.

[Asim]

The Aussies deserved to win the world cup because they are the most professional side in the world.

[Shah Khan]

PCB picks again tried, rejected men for team management
By Rehan Siddiqui

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) was provided with a God-sent opportunity to put its house in shambles in order, and start afresh following the team's disgraceful exit from the World Cup 2003 , the disastrous Test series against Australia and the tour of South Africa by inducting fresh faces having no hangover of the past failures.

Yet PCB chief, who considers himself beyond accountability, wasted this chance by opting to name tried and rejected officials as coach, manager and captain while a controversial former skipper Aamir Sohail was picked to replace Wasim Bari as the new chairman of selection committee entrusted with the onerous task of rebuilding a new team.

The changes look more like a clearance sale of a departmental store declared bankrupt. Javed Miandad, Rashid Latif and Haroon Rashid have replaced Richard Pybus, Waqar Younis and former diplomat Shaharyar Khan. Seen in the present context of Pakistan cricket, it is no more than a backward step taken by those who have no vision but are trying desperately to hang on to their high-profile jobs.

A cursory glance of the three appointees confirms the mental bankruptcy of PCB think tank managing its affairs. The trio hd been assigned the same tasks before but found wanting only to be sacked.

Judging from their past record it is very unlikely and in all probability they would meet the same fate again, only to wait in the wings for another turn to serve in the "best interest of the country".

With no disrespect to Miandad, undoubtedly country's best- ever batsman, but unfortunately a flop when it comes to coaching. He was twice forced to step down from the same assignment. To bring him in again for the third time could prove even more damaging. Will Miandad be able to deliver the goods this time around, only the coming months will tell.

The most mind-boggling decision is the appointment of Rashid Latif as skipper of the team. No spring chicken, the 34-year-old Rashid, is hardly an inspired selection, in view of his past record as skipper and his reputation as whistle blower against his own colleagues.

Rashid himself had announced his retirement from Test cricket and the World Cup was to be his swan song. But in an U-turn, the wicketkeeper, like the PCB boss, accepted the offer and took the new responsibility and the challenge to play a "key role" in restoring Pakistan's battered and bruised reputation as one of the top playing nations with the much maligned cliche " in the best interest of the country and the game". His appointment exposes the double standards and the adhocism practicised by the PCB boss and his advisors.

Instead of giving Rashid a second chance to lead Pakistan, PCB should have made a clean break and gone for a younger player likely to last till the 2007 World Cup.

But logic and reasoning do not go together as far as PCB is concerned. How long Rashid, also injury prone, will last is a million dollar question that only the General could answer.

Another intriguing selection is of Haroon Rashid as manager who somehow or the other gets himself a "lucrative" job regardless of whoever calls the shots in PCB. He must be "indispensable" and a man for all seasons. He seems to be always on the right side of PCB but eventually gets dumped.

An ordinary Test and one-day player, Haroon, has in the past served PCB as coach and manager for both senior and junior teams, quite an achievement.

If the appointments of Miandad, Rashid and Haroon are definitely backward measures the selection of Aamir Sohail is even more controversial.

A player with poor discipline record and one who once even did not turn up to lead Pakistan in a Test match. His selection is another decision that shows utter lack of imagination on part of the PCB.

It is also an open secret that Aamir has attitude problem. This could pose problems between him, his co-selectors and the team management, not a good omen when trying to rebuild a new squad under a new team management.

We must keep our fingers crossed and hope for the betterment of Pakistan cricket after the nightmarish last six months that has plunged this cricket crazy nation into being bracketed with the likes of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. And with the present all-powerful one-man show the outlook appears anything but gloomy for Pakistan cricket if one takes into account the results of past three and half years.

http://www.dawn.com/2003/03/23/spt7.htm

[Shah Khan]

Sachin Tendulkar only performs in unimportant matches, Dravid slams Tendulkar critics
By Manak Gupta, BBC Hindi

Rahul Dravid has responded angrily to claims team-mate Sachin Tendulkar only performs in unimportant matches.


Critics have questioned the mental resolve of Tendulkar, who was dismissed for four in India's 125-run defeat to Australia in Sunday's World Cup final.

The 29-year-old was named man of the tournament after hitting a record 673 runs in 11 games.

But he has been dogged thoughout his career by accusations he underperforms when India need him most.
However, vice-captain Dravid dismissed those views as "absolutely ridiculous".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport3/cwc2003...00/2881417.stm

"It's people nitpicking and trying to find faults with the greatest batsmen in the world," he told BBC Hindi. "I'm sick and tired of hearing these things."

"They should look at his record and respect him for what he does. I see that happening all the time with Sachin and I think he handles it brilliantly.

"He scored 673 runs and if somebody tells me the World Cup is not important then they should get their head checked."

Sourav Ganguly's decision to send Australia into bat backfired when Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden made an opening stand of 105 off 14 overs at the Wanderers.


I don't think there was anything wrong with our tactics - we just didn't execute the plan right
Rahul Dravid
Ricky Ponting and Damien Martyn continued the onslaught in a record 234-run third-wicket partnership.
But despite heavy criticism from the media, Dravid insisted his captain had made the correct decision.

"It was a good decision to field, the ball was seaming around and turning because of the damp," he said.

"We lost it in our first 20 overs with the bowling - we didn't create enough pressure.

"And once they got off to a great start, we always knew our backs were against the wall.

"But I don't think there was anything wrong with our tactics - we just didn't execute the plan right."


Dravid is confident India's young side will once more be challenging the Australians for their world crown in 2007 in the West Indies.
"I definitely think we won't have to wait another 20 years to get another good opportunity, looking at the side right now," he added.

"Eighty percent of this team will be there at the next World Cup, form and fitness willing."

[Gulstan]

Can some one tell me WHY we are going ahead with the Sharjah cup,in the me, when 23/3 parade was cancelled over 1500 miles away

[Behjat]

Miandad ready for job


By Our Sports Correspondent

LAHORE, March 25: The newly appointed Pakistan cricket coach, former Test captain Javed Miandad, has dispelled the impression that he feels relaxed now that most of the senior players have been omitted from the squad for next month's Sharjah Cup because of their poor performance in the World Cup.

Speaking to the media at Gaddafi Stadium on Tuesday, Miandad pointed out that he was ready for his job and it did not make any difference to him whether senior or junior players were to be trained by him.

Miandad, who joined Pakistan team as coach for the third time in four years, said that he had coached the senior players without any problems.

Miandad, who reached here from Dubai on Tuesday, added that he was not sure whether the April 1-10 Sharjah Cup would be postponed or not due to the US-led war against Iraq.

He said that Dubai was calm and was not affected by the war.

[Aziz]

Pakistan Cricketers May Face New Corruption Probe, Person Says
By Richard Sydenham


London, March 26 (Bloomberg) -- The International Cricket Council, the sport's ruling body, may request a new inquiry into allegations that Pakistan players took bribes to lose matches at the 1999 World Cup because an earlier probe didn't consider all the evidence, a person familiar with the situation said.

A Pakistan government-commissioned investigation by Justice Karamat Nazir Bhandari concluded last year that the team's defeats to Bangladesh and India weren't fixed. The ICC may seek another inquiry because submissions from its investigative body, the Anti- Corruption Unit, weren't included in the Bhandari report, the person familiar said.

``The Code of Conduct Commission (the ICC's disciplinary body) said we have not looked into this and not looked into that but not much evidence was available,'' General Tauqir Zia, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, said in a telephone interview. ``It's just a misunderstanding in my opinion.''

Cricket's credibility may be at stake after two of nine players punished for corruption had their sanctions overturned by civil courts. One of them, Ata-ur-Rehman of Pakistan, was among five players banned for life. The ACU was formed in 2000 to eradicate corruption and expose miscreants.

The ICC and ACU declined to comment. Justice Bhandari could not be reached for comment.

Justice Bhandari, in his Jan. 31, 2002, report, said the ACU ``had no material in support of the theory that the (Bangladesh) match was fixed.'' Zia was due to have addressed the ICC's Executive Board about the report during a meeting on Saturday in Johannesburg but he couldn't attend. The matter will be discussed at the next board meeting in June.

Legal Aid

Zia said he is seeking legal advice on the report. If the ICC isn't satisfied with his explanation, it will ask the Pakistan Cricket Board to instigate a new inquiry, the person familiar said.

Justice Bhandari's four-month inquiry centered on Pakistan's May 31, 1999, upset against low-ranked Bangladesh, which hasn't won in 32 matches since. Pakistan was sure to reach the next round of the tournament in England regardless of the result.

Two former players and Ali Bacher, head of the 2003 World Cup that concluded Sunday, alleged that players were bribed to lose. At the time, Bacher was chief executive of the United Cricket Board of South Africa. Pakistan went on to lose in the 1999 final against Australia.

In his report, Justice Bhandari said his commission had an ``enlightening'' meeting with ACU officials in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in November 2001.

``The commission pointedly asked for material relevant to the subject but the answer was in the negative,'' Justice Bhandari said. In response to his request for testimony from Bacher, the ACU submitted a magazine article, his report said.

Aziz

[H Khan]

KARACHI, March 27 (Reuters) - Members of the Pakistan World Cup squad have been docked half their earnings from the tournament because of their poor performances.

"This was an agreement signed before the World Cup and the players agreed to performance-based terms and conditions," Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) spokesman Samiul Hasan told Reuters on Thursday.

"The agreement was that if they failed to go beyond the preliminary rounds, they would face 50 per cent deductions from their total earnings from the tournament."

Eight senior members of the World Cup squad have been dropped for next month's Sharjah tournament, including captain Waqar Younis, the experienced Wasim Akram, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Saeed Anwar, and fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar.

Pakistan won only two matches in the World Cup's first round, against minnows Namibia and the Netherlands, losing to Australia, England and India as they failed to get past the tournament's opening stage for the first time since 1975.



03/27/03 10:23 ET

[azeemchoudhary]

salaam...does anyone know why Imran nazir was not selected for the world cup, and now for the sharjah cup? he is by far one of the best young batsmen i have seen play for Pakistan for quite a while!

[Saad Hasan]

Political selections will only heighten Pakistan's cricketing problems

From Shahed Sadullah

LONDON: At his first press conference since his third appointment as Pakistan's cricket coach, former captain and star batsman Javed Miandad made the welcome statement that only those will be selected to play for Pakistan who have been able to perform and that merit would be the only criteria. That is a welcome statement, albeit one that has often been made in the past as well; let us hope that this time around it is implemented for a change.

Not that the beginnings inspire one with confidence. First of all, the assurance that henceforth selection will be purely on performance and merit should have come from the chairman of selectors rather than the coach; more worrying is the fact that the first team to have come from this selection committee in which one presumes the new coach must have had an input, does not appear to have been based on merit.

What appears to have been given greater consideration is the political imperative of being seen to be making sweeping changes and to throw out 'senior players'. Any campaign against any of the players described as a group, be it on the basis of age or any other factor, is bound to be counter-productive.

There is no virtue, per se, in youth, and no disadvantage, per se, in playing the 'senior players'. A merit based selection policy would not give preference to youth only because of youth and would not throw out older players only because they are older. The youth have to show that they are at least as good as, or preferably better than, the senior players they are replacing.

That does not appear to have been the case in the selection of the squad for Sharjah. Wasim Akram was by far the best Pakistani bowler in this World Cup and Saeed Anwar by far the most successful Pakistani batsman. They topped the respective bowling and batting averages; yet both have been dropped.

It is ridiculous to argue that Umar Gul is a better bowler than Wasim Akram or that Mohammad Hafeez a better batsman than Saeed Anwar. If that is the argument, where is the evidence to support it. Nor is the argument that newcomers have to be given a chance to prove themselves at all convincing in this context.

Sure they have to be given a chance but that chance must be at the cost of the poorer performers, not the best ones. If another opener was to be tried, the most successful opener in the World Cup should not have been asked to make way for the new comer. It should have been the least successful of the three openers in the World Cup squad.

Thus while the exclusion of Waqar, Inzamam, and Saqlain would be understandable from a cricketing point of view, the dropping of Wasim and Saeed Anwar can only be explained politically. Purely from a cricketing point of view, it would have made much more sense to bring in a young wicket-keeper, like Kamran Akmal, in place of Rashid Latif, whose performance in the World Cup was not really designed to set anything on fire.

It is clear that what is in operation here is a politically motivated selection policy that is designed to make the job easy for the team management and enable it exercise complete sway over the team. As a selection criteria, that is neither here nor there and cannot be expected to solve any of Pakistan's cricketing problems, of which there are quite a few.

In fact, the nomination of the selection committee by the PCB chief was as politically motivated as anything else.

A couple of days before the changes were announced, he had said on an ethnic TV channel that the selection committee would not be changed because it would not be reasonable to expect a new committee to have the knowledge and background regarding the players who were on the brink of the squad, as a new committee would not consist of people who had been following them.

Quite apart from that, the squad selected for the World Cup was, by general consensus, the best available and the Wasim Bari-led selection committee was therefore not to blame for the World Cup debacle. The contention that all the members of the old committee suddenly had personal or other official considerations arising a couple of days after that statement of the PCB chief would not convince too many. Over the past few years, political decisions have taken a heavy toll on Pakistan cricket.

The sacking of Yawar Saeed and Mudassar Nazar, the reappointment of Pybus and the huge retinue that accompanies the squad on its increasing catalogue of failures have only served a political purpose. The problems of Pakistan cricket are too deep to respond to political window dressing and one fears that the proof of that will be upon us sooner rather than later. And, unlike the coalition effort in Iraq, one is talking days and weeks here, not months.

[MohammedA]

Admin: Can we put up a sticky titled: "Pakistan crikcet News and Views"????



Sami explodes with balls of fire
Eddie Smith - 6 April 2003

Mohammed Sami of Pakistan clocked 156.4km/h in Thursday's game against Zimbabwe to become the third fastest bowler in recent times.

In the absence of enduring stars like Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram, and the hundred-miles-per-hour man Shoaib Akhtar, Sami seems to have grabbed the bull by the horns and decided that he wants the mantle not only as the spearhead of Pakistan's pace battery but also perhaps as the world's fastest bowler.

Sami's 156.4km/h leapfrogs him into third place in the pace race and signals intent to both Lee and Shoaib of his impending presence.

Mohammed Sami's career has previously been one of unfulfilled promise, as he has threatened to ignite for some time but has failed to live up to expectation.

Before his debut, Sami had been described as "Very fast and very hostile." In 2000, about the then 18-years-old, Wasim Akram said that he was at least as fast as Shoaib and that he was happy for him to play Test cricket.

It was almost two years ago to the day that Sami, a skinny 20-year-old fired up the guns with a 147.5km/h thunderbolt against Sri Lanka. Sami had previously clocked 143km/h on his debut against New Zealand but it was this 90mph plus delivery which signalled to many that he had arrived as a genuine speedster and would soon be in the express category.

The past two years have seen Sami's speeds all but stall as he has hovered around the mid-140s (km/h) with a top speed confirmed at 149.7km/h. The 150km/h-plus deliveries have proved elusive as he has sat on the edge of the 'express paceman's' club watching other emerging speed demons pass him by.

Some have proposed that the 22-year-old has been living in the shadow of established stalwarts for too long and that his potential speed would only come to fruition with the confidence which results from being handed the reigns as a leader of the attack. Others have stated that his slight frame would physically not allow him to bowl above the 150km/h mark.

Sami has now blasted the latter train of thought out of the water whilst the former looks to be more on the money.

In his first five-over spell, Sami bowled nine balls exceeding the 150km/h benchmark. Five of them went well beyond it at 152km/h or above, culminating with the 156.4km/h delivery, the first ball of his fifth over. This speed has been verified by the second radar which captured the ball's velocity slightly later in its flight path at 155.7km/h. Thanks once again goes to Warren Brennan and the crew at BBG for their continued support and professionalism with regards the confirmation of bowling speeds.

The magnitude of Mohammed Sami's new found pace can only be comprehended when it is realized that he is the only bowler ever to be recorded initially breaking the 150km/h barrier and then pushing past 155km/h within the same match. That kind of jump is unheralded.

Sami followed up his Herculean performance with 10 balls registering above 149km/h against Sri Lanka. A remarkable effort considering the high temperature in Sharjah and the unusual strain that his body underwent the previous day.

To try and put one's finger on the physical modifications which have given birth to Sami's fresh pace would be to analyse Sami's bodily metamorphosis and his action adjustments. He has no doubt added a bit of meat to his light bones and a few yards of pace to his diminutive run-up. Add to this a demeanour bristling with confidence and the result is an explosive burst which propels the ball at breakneck speeds.

Pakistan's cricket fans the world over are left wondering what might have been, had the kid from Karachi been given the opportunity to partner Shoaib in a twin pace assault at the recently completed World Cup. In an event where only four of the world's pacers bettered 150km/h, it would have been a sight to behold having the fast men charging in and giving the batsmen no respite.

The temptation for the Pakistan selectors now would be to rush back Shoaib and see just what this pairing are capable of. If it is anything even remotely close to what Waqar and Wasim were accomplishing back in their halcyon days, then the world's batsmen may be in for a few sleepless nights as they scramble to send off order forms for the finest in new-fangled body armour.

© CricInfo


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Teams Pakistan.
Players/Umpires Mohammad Sami.