January 30th, 1999, Javed Miandad walks out into the balcony and waves at Shahid Khan Afridi to calm down. Miandad is all too familiar with the pressures and emotions dripping down Afridi’s helmet. The last time Pakistan visited India was over 12 years ago and Miandad was run out on 94 at this very ground. Afridi adheres to his coach’s advice for a change and points his bat to the dressing room as he reaches the three figure mark in only his second Test match.
The following evening Miandad leads Pakistan to a victory lap around a packed Chennai audience. The gracious applause of the 50,000 fans would be heard by Sachin Tendulkar for years to come, or perhaps he would forever endure the echoes of silence that had come at the fall of his wicket a little earlier in the evening.
Pakistan won two out three Test matches beyond enemy lines and through Miandad’s tactful gamesmanship had kept their arch rival out of the finals of the Asian Test Championship. They returned home not just as victors but as men who had hoisted the flag of peace across the border and set the stage for political diplomacy that should have followed.
Three months later Javed Miandad was sacked as coach and the breathtakingly beautiful Kashmiri district of Kargil turned into a turf-war. Meanwhile, the two adversaries prepared for the World Cup being held in the country that had pulled out its forces half a century earlier and left behind a sub-continent that was divided, yet bounded in more ways than one, Kashmir was just part parcel.
Miandad’s departure as coach came with all sorts of rumours. Media reported a fall-out with senior players due to ego battles and disputes over prize money. Miandad believed that the bounty should be equally shared with the coach. Some reports also suggested that Miandad was angry about suspected match-fixing in a pre World Cup game against England in Sharjah.
Mushtaq Mohammad replaced Miandad as coach for the World Cup, only to hand over his duties to Wasim Raja after two months.
Right from when Hanif Muhammad blocked Abdul Hafeez Kardar’s comeback to the national team and Kardar returned the favour by allegedly ending Hanif’s career when he became an administrator, to the recent spat between Waqar Younis and Shahid Afridi. The script usually follows the long tradition of ex-players returning to the fray in management roles to strive for the same power they enjoyed as cricketers or misemploy the authority they never had as one.
While Pakistan continued its customary roles of coaching through the 90’s, the world was entering into a new age. Australian and English coaches in particular had taken the lead in exploring the vast utility of data analysis in team meetings and sat in the dressing rooms with one hand on their laptops. The importance of being a qualified coach was rapidly increasing and international cricket experience was becoming a secondary requisition.
With few technically qualified coaches in Pakistan, the PCB had to take its search out of Pakistani borders. English born Richard Pybus was appointed as Pakistan’s first foreign coach in November 1999. He was not an ex-international cricketer but a coach by profession. He was fired within 2 months after being whitewashed and sun dried in the Australian summer.
Pybus had not produced results but he had introduced a taste of foreign management, something the Pakistani authorities would thereon forever crave. Apart from being competent and a thorough professional, he had no inclination towards team politics. Free from provincial or personal bias, the foreign coach was absolved of the pride and prejudice that had afflicted many of his predecessors. Pybus had three stints with the Pakistani team in the space of four years. The coach’s cap was also passed around Intikhab Alam, Mudassar Nazar and Javed Miandad in the same period.
In 2004, after their first and only series loss to India at home in their 50-year history, Pakistan sought the services of arguably the most respected coach in the world. Bob Woolmer had been instrumental in the modern revolution of coaching methods. He was appointed as the South African coach in 1994 and by 1999 he had made the Proteas into the No.1 ranked Test team in the world.
Pakistan was ranked No.6 in the world when Bob Woolmer was hired. This was the start of ‘relatively’ the most peaceful period in the Pakistani dressing room since Imran Khan had retired in 1992. Inzamam-ul-Haq became captain by default as most senior players were permanently dropped in the post World Cup cleanup operation of 2003; perhaps chief selector Aamir Sohail settled a few old scores as well.
Inzamam was never known as man with a great cricketing brain or someone geared towards captaincy. However, he turned out to be a good leader of men. He led from the front with the bat and there was nobody to challenge his authority or seniority in the team. This gave Woolmer the ideal opportunity to work on optimizing the potential in Pakistan’s talent pool. Mohamad Yousuf, Shoaib Akhtar and Younis Khan flourished and largely credited Woolmer for their success while he motivated Afridi to finally become the all-rounder he should have many years ago.
At the time of the tragic and mysterious death of Bob Woolmer in March 2007, Pakistan was ranked No.3 in Test cricket, only behind Australia and England. Woolmer had disproved the theory that a foreign coach cannot be successful in Pakistan.
Not only was Woolmer very successful but also highly loved and respected. Pakistan had lost to Ireland and had crashed out of the World Cup but the likes of Younis Khan deeply mourned Woolmer’s death. He said “I was the closest to him in the team and we discussed everything. He was like a father figure for me.” Two years later, Younis won the ICC World T20 Champions as captain and dedicated the win to Woolmer.
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