“Pakistan cricket is going through its darkest era, “says the Rawalpindi Express, Shoaib Akhtar. He slammed the coach and staff for not making any valuable contribution to the team and went onto say that players are not in right frame of mind. He also slammed Kamran Akmal, who has not been able to perform well, either with the gloves or with the bat.
The former Pakistani pacer was quoted by The Hindu saying, “We need a coach who can "unite the players in the dressing room". I think if we need to take positives from the Champions Trophy we should learn from South Africa who survived isolation in the apartheid era and have emerged as a top team in the world.”
"Pakistan needs to learn from them because we are also in a similar position as there is no international team coming to Pakistan since 2009. But we are still in a better position than them in the sense that we are still playing our matches at neutral venues.”
Akhtar was disappointed with the under-par batting by the Pakistani batsmen in the last couple of matches. He was quoted by The Times of India saying, “Most of the members in the national team are "mentally disturbed". Pakistan cricket is currently going through its "darkest era". We are so unfortunate that we haven’t been able to find a wicket-keeping batsman from the past 10 years and have to persist with someone like Akmal who does more harm than good to the Pakistan’s side.”
He added,” Coach is there to take out those fears that players are facing rather than to go and teach them. His role should be of making the amendments which are there in Pakistan’s fielding and batting departments. Pakistan should go for Tom Moody as he is the only man who can bring the match-winning attitude into the team. He is fantastic, rugged, brilliant manager, brilliant motivator and accommodator and he knows how to handle guys.”
Akhtar was quoted by Hindustan Times saying, “Batting woes are still unresolved which is very disappointing to see. The problem in our batting comes from the grass-root level which needs to be curbed. Pakistan had been bowled out without playing the full 50 overs in seven of their last 12 ODIs is a discouraging sign.”
He added, “Even a player like Misbah has no choice but to adopt a conservative and safety-first approach due to the poor performance of his colleagues. Blaming him for his captaincy and batting is just a poor excuse to side-line the names that have not been doing well in recent times.”
He slammed the batting legends of yesteryears who have not turned up to give their services. He went onto say, "Pakistan has always been able to produce some of the world's greatest players. The greatest, however, have not coached the under-19 and the under-16 teams where they can be matured as a batsman. By those ages you should have maturity as a batsman. The best age is 15, if you tell them how to play the game and rotate the strike, that's where real coaching come into play. I would say that there is a huge gap in that area."