What's wrong with Pakistan's cricket team?

A cricketing powerhouse for decades, Pakistan's national team have suddenly found themselves on a sticky wicket. This month Pakistan suffered a shocking 2-0 home Test series defeat to Bangladesh, a country they have beaten in every previous Test encounter.

And that outcome is far more than an unlucky fluke. The Pakistani men's side have not won a Test match at home since February 2021: "a winless streak of 10 games", said Al Jazeera.

Following their defeat to Bangladesh, Pakistan fell to number eight in the ICC Test rankings: their worst position in nearly six decades. Their recent performances have "nosedived across all formats" of cricket, with poor management, political instability and the chaotic churn in coaches and captains all blamed for the downfall.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Just not cricket

Among Pakistan's nearly 240 million people, cricket is by far the most popular sport. It "cuts across all divides in society", which gives it "enormous cultural and political cachet", said Eastern Eye. Players are "celebrated as national heroes" – some, like former captain and now jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, even ascend to the top levels of political power off the back of their sporting glory.

But this year, Pakistan failed to qualify for the Super 8 round of the T20 World Cup after losing the group stage matches to rivals India and the non-Test playing USA. They also failed to get out of the group stages at the 50-over World Cup. Perhaps their last notable run was during the T20 World Cup in 2022, when they eventually lost a one-sided final to England.

In the past two years alone, Pakistani cricket has "ploughed through four coaches, three board heads, three captains and numerous formats of the domestic competition", said Agence France-Presse. Regional analysts have said the repeated upheaval is due to a system that "rides on the whims of politicians" rather than the best interests of the game.

Khan recently issued a statement from prison, describing the country's cricketing woes as a result of the same political forces he alleges are behind his conviction. "Favourites have been imposed to run a technical sport like cricket. What are Mohsin Naqvi's qualifications?" he said, referring to the current chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), who has a second full-time job as interior minister.

The "incongruity" of Naqvi's dual roles was highlighted when he hosted a recent press conference, discussing both a deadly militant attack and a cricket game.

The PCB has also been accused of "favouring" certain players, said the Hindustan Times, and Shan Masood's "lacklustre captaincy" has failed to turn things around for the Test team.

Decades in the making

The "Pakistan team's rapid downward spiral has been alarming, to say the least", said the Express Tribune. The recent series of high-profile losses "makes the mind boggle". But for critics of the game, "the pattern has been all too obvious for nearly two decades".

"Ad hocism has taken root" in the PCB – little surprise in a nation "increasingly shorn of democratic values", said the Karachi-based English language newspaper. The ruling regime has "hand-picked" favourites to lead the PCB, to "run the game in their own clueless manner, only to ruin it".

This politically motivated interference in the sport "has a knock-on effect on team performance", said Ahsan Iftikhar Nagi, cricket journalist and former media manager of the PCB, the governing body. "When we have chaos and chronic instability within the management of the board it will reflect in the on-field performances," he said on France 24.

Chaos is "prevalent" both on and off the field, said the Express Tribune, and domestic cricket pitches are in a "poor state", which leaves batsmen and bowlers unprepared for competitive international cricket. More and more leading players choose to head off to international T20 leagues because the money is better. Their "continuous absence" has taken its toll on the PCB's "much-trumpeted flagship project", the Pakistan Super League.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's cricket bosses are "sitting pretty in their cushy jobs, handed to them in a platter by the respective regimes". They have no time nor inclination to "set things right", said the Express Tribune; they are "busy working on their own respective agendas": saving "their own skin and seat, or making good money at the expense of the country's cricket".