Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Meet the future captain of Pakistan cricket team...

You heard it here first. Note down the date, time and place, because today I'm going to make a bold prediction,  a prediction about who will be the captain of Pakistan cricket team in two years (which means predicting the 17th captain after the current one, not an easy task by any means).

And the player is Nasir Jamshed, a left handed batsmen who player 12 ODIs for Pakistan in the past, scored 349 runs at an average of 35 and strike rate of 101. Not earth shattering stuff, you are saying? And some of you would probably have noticed from his cricinfo page that he is already 20 years old, almost 11 years older than the current captain Shahid Afridi, who himself has been playing cricket for 14 years now. So neither stats nor age is in favor of our guy. Then why do I think he is a candidate? Hear me out and it'll all make sense.

Over the years, selectors of national teams have used different criteria to select the squad and the captain. Do you go with the naturally gifted players or do you go with the ones in their peak form? How do you balance between raw talent and work ethics? Do you look for a consistent player or the ones who can change the games on their own? These are probably some of the questions national selectors contemplate (unless, of course, they are Srikanth)

Hence, I was pleasantly surprised when the newly appointed chief selector of Pakistan, Mohsin Khan, showed great clarity of thought and articulated the criteria of selection. “My criteria of selecting players are discipline, fitness and performance and I will not compromise on any of it.", said Mohsin Khan. Then, he promptly went ahead and appointed Shahid Afridi as the captain of the national team. Makes sense, doesn't it?. If discipline is one of your key criteria for selecting the team, then who else is more suitable to lead the team than Afridi. The guy has recently been banned by ICC for tampering with the ball and have been fined by his board. He has threatened to quit his domestic team when he was overlooked for captaincy. He also has an extremely rich history of excellent disciplined behavior; be it mid-pitch collisions, tampering with the pitch (video), threatening spectators with the bat, just to name a few examples. One can understand what Mohsin Khan meant when he said that he will not compromise on discipline. He clearly means business.

So now, once we know that how serious the chief selector is, can we look at the domestic circuit to see who else fits the bill. Of course, one need to be cognizant of the fact that the talent displayed in domestic circles doesn't always gets translated to international arena. But all we need to look for is the early signs, signs that show a next Tendulkar in the making or in this case the next Afridi.

That's why, I almost jumped out, shouting Eureka, when I read this article in Dawn (for those who are wondering - no, I was not in my bath tub at that time and I was completely dressed). Nasir Jamshed has been fined for cheating in the school exam. Wow! the signs of another Afridi in making is unmistakable. Not only did he cheat, but he was also caught "red handed". If this doesn't convince you that he has all the right stuff to be Pakistan's captain, I don't know what will. I'll be watching this guy's career with considerable interest.

And by the way, I believe Ramiz Raja, after hearing about this incident, is planning to write an artcle called "Give Nasir a break" and "legalize" cheating in exams (a sequel to his earlier article about ball tampering). His logic would be something along the lines of - the entire exam system is unfairly biased towards hardworking and intelligent students. So to offer a even playing field to guys like Nasir, we should allow people to cheat in exams. We are in for interesting times.

1 comment:

  1. ha ha,i am interested to know whats your take on the previous captain "SOHAIB MALIK" the most trending topic on twitter these days, well he seems to be a very shy, simple,kind-harted,and a loving individual - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doj8tSUwKtc

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