Pakistan reach Kolkata amid cloud of uncertainty

THE Pakistan squad landed here in the city of joy on Saturday evening, with hardly enough things to be joyful about.

Babar Azam and his men are languishing sixth in the World Cup points table having won just two of their six matches so far, with their chances to make the semi-finals extremely narrow.

While Pakistan’s on field problems continue to carry on, the issues off the field have created an air of suffocation and panic within the ranks. In fact, they exactly may be the reason for the team’s below par performances.

Following Pakistan’s one-wicket defeat to South Africa on Friday, former captain Rashid Latif claimed that Babar had been trying to reach Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) interim Management Committee chairman Zaka Ashraf over the phone for two days but hadn’t received a response.

Rashid went on to say during the World Cup transmission on state television that Babar also dialed the PCB’s chief operating officer Salman Naseer and director international Usman Wahla but failed to hear back from both officials.

The apparent fallout, according to Rashid and some media reports, has occurred due to ongoing disagreements over the players’ central contracts – the revised version of which is yet to be signed.

The players, the ex wicket-keeper claimed, haven’t been paid their salaries since the last five months and that there were still disagreements between them and the board over some clauses of the contract.

“Categorically” denying Rashid’s claim, the Pakistan team’s media manager and previously the PCB’s director media Umar Farooq Kalson, said Babar and all the other players were focused on cricket.

“The claim made by [Rashid Latif] was not true,” Umar told Dawn on Sunday.

On Sunday night, Umar said the players had “started singing the contracts” after the documents were received by the team management here.

He added that the players will begin to receive their due compensations from next week.

However, the PCB official said there were no revisions from the contracts offered in September. The contracts were originally negotiated last month hours before team’s departure for World Cup campaign and players were given historic hike in their monthly retainer with over 200 percent increament.

“It is not unusual for the signing process to take time,” he said.

Umar joined the national team’s camp on Friday night in Chennai, hours after the PCB asked the team’s former media manager Ahsan Iftikhar Nagi to return to Pakistan.

The abrupt nature of Ahsan’s withdrawal from the Pakistan contingent hinted that all was not right within the ranks of the team management.

While the controversy unfolded, the PCB had released a statement urging fans and the country’s cricket fraternity to “continue to support the team but also suggested the higher officials of the board weren’t involved in the selection of the team ahead of the World Cup.

Since September 2021, the PCB has been run by three different administrations, two of them – that of Zaka and his predecessor Najam Sethi – have been interim setups.

While both Sethi and Zaka’s management committees were mandated to hold the pending elections of the PCB, they went on to carry out high profile recruitment and take cricketing decisions.

The fluctuating and differing nature of the board’s decision making has affected the team mentally ahead of and during the World Cup.

According to a source within the national team’s camp, the instability at the PCB offices has let fear slip into the players’ minds.

“They are humans, it is unavoidable,” the source told Dawn. “It’s not ideal, you know, when it’s continually changing.

“It is not ideal for anybody because there is instability, and instability brings fear, it creates uncertainty and those are things that we all feel but we can never use that as an excuse.

“We have to do our professional job and we are doing that for the best of our abilities.”

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2023