Pakistani cricket captains are very much like Pakistani Prime Ministers, regardless of your biases, you always wish for some stability, but there is no predicting when they might be booted out.And just as an unpopular Prime Minister comes under scrutiny from the higher-ups, so does a captain struggling for runs come under the scanner.
Shan Masood, though, is not merely struggling for runs. He has never consistently made any at the Test level. As blunt as that may sound, his actual numbers paint the picture just as starkly: his batting average stands at 28 after 34 Test matches.
In the most recent one of those Tests, he had the unsavoury distinction of being the first Pakistan captain to lose to Bangladesh, after misreading the pitch and playing four seamers on what turned out to be a typical subcontinental track, with some moisture at the start giving way to flatter conditions that cracked open for spinners by the final day.
A tactical blunder like this one should have been unthinkable for the kind of cricketer Masood has been presented as, a brainy nerd always looking to outdo the opposition with clever planning and clear, positive thinking. Whatever shortcomings he had with the bat were to be overshadowed by his leadership.
The pen was to outweigh the sword.
And, to be fair, it seemed to be working at the beginning, as he marshalled the best performance of a Pakistani side in Australia in this century. It would not be outlandish to suggest that Pakistan missed out on a series win due to dropped catches.
While the runs, as always, were lacking for Shan, this was mitigated by the fact that Pakistan competed better in Australia than they had at home in the previous season. And he somehow ended up as his team’s second-best batter. As long as he could sustain the upward trajectory of the Test team through a bumper home season this year, and push his average into the more respectable mid-30s, his future as captain looked rosy.
Which brings us back to Rawalpindi, and Bangladesh abruptly knocking off those rose-tinted glasses. In the short term, there is not much to ponder about. The second Test must be won to avoid an embarrassing series loss. Farther into the future, though, await series against England and the West Indies at home, and South Africa away, and this defeat has ensured that the vultures circling above Shan Masood’s head have inched much closer.
Having experienced the aftershocks of an abrupt change of captaincy in T20Is, the Test team can ill afford a leadership crisis. After such a setback, Masood has a mountain to climb, with the spectre of a trigger-happy PCB chairman looming, and his own batting record hanging above him like the sword of Damocles.
Now more than ever, he must find a way to make runs, while captaining with the tactical know-how that got him the captaincy in the first place. Now more than ever, Pakistan needs a leader, with both pen and sword.
Author: Talha Hayat is a freelance cricket writer, having contributed to various cricket platforms, as well as a regular cricket podcaster.