3 major challenges for Mohammad Rizwan as Pakistan's new white-ball captain
It's a famous, accepted idea in Pakistan cricketing circles that every big defeat in men's cricket has to be followed by a captaincy change. It's an easy way to shift the burden away from everything wrong with the administration, the system, etc.
It took a coming-of-age prodigy like Babar Azam as the captain for the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to refrain from interfering with his team for more than four years until the 2023 men's World Cup. But since they did interfere to sack him, all hell has broken loose again, with the PCB appointing a third captain of a white-ball format -- wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan -- in just over a year.
Rizwan's tenure began on Sunday (October 27) with a press conference and he will take the field on November 4 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in the first of the three-ODI series against Australia. Below, we have listed the three major challenges that he'll have to overcome to have a successful tenure:
#3 Managing the 3 power centers
The critical error of judgment in changing captaincy every few months is that captains hardly have an on-field role to play in white-ball cricket anymore. Most tactics are made inside the dressing room and the remaining job is to imply those ideas under pressure while being an inspirational and motivational hand to players.
The failure of Babar's tenure, thus, was hardly about the errors he made on the field. And under him, the team had found some decent consistency on the field while, according to observers, being quite stable and friendly behind the scenes.
One reason for that was that there were no other players in the team, senior or junior, with urgent captaincy ambitions or those who had been removed from captaincy recently but stayed in the team. Rizwan will have to deal with two such players - Babar and Shaheen Shah Afridi.
Afridi was made the captain for just one series between Babar's stepping down after the World Cup and being reinstated. Now, he has also been demoted from the Grade 'A' category of PCB central contracts -- the only remaining members are Babar and Rizwan -- which can take a toll on his mentality.
So, Rizwan's team now has three power centers -- a former captain-cum-best-batter Babar, a disgruntled-former-captain-cum-best-bowler Afridi and himself. A perusal of Pakistan cricket history would show that even two such power centers have been detrimental to the team's stability; managing three would be a big ask.
For working in Pakistan men's cricket, these three players' performances are key. Any kind of friction would only hurt the team. Rizwan is considered a good on-field captain but it would be his job to sit Babar and Afridi together, clarify their roles and make them feel respected and heard, so their fight for Pakistan's success goes on.
It's a very sensitive time for the team and more than bowling and fielding changes, it's how Rizwan settles his dressing room environment that'll have the most impact.
#2 Shielding team from outside uncertainty
A day after Rizwan became the white-ball captain, the PCB accepted white-ball coach Gary Kirsten's resignation. It announced, in a ridiculously small statement, that red-ball coach Jason Gillespie will take over the team for the Australia tour.
If you thought the captaincy changes were too many, this is the seventh coaching change in the last two years. A similar number of men have been appointed and replaced in weeks in the selection committee and even in the PCB administration.
This is a daily story at the PCB. No matter how many weeks, months, or years Rizwan will stay as the captain, he'll see those who backed him in the PCB and among the selectors replaced, the coaches sacked and the visions changed.
When Pakistan men's cricket team is called "unpredictable", that is less of a reflection of the team's on-field performances but more of the mess that goes on behind the scenes, which is bound to impact every player and their performances.
What Micky Arthur and Sarfaraz Ahmed did during Pakistan's last ICC title, the 2017 Champions Trophy, was to shield the team from this. That would be Rizwan's second biggest challenge -- with another Champions Trophy coming up, followed by the T20 World Cup and ODI World Cup in consecutive years, he'll have to protect his team from the noise and find some on-field consistency.
This would mean backing players that the media hates and saying it out loud, making tough decisions for the benefit of the team and being courageous at every juncture. It's not about against the board necessarily but keeping the players on his side at all times, while trying to build an environment of support. Wins will follow.
Unpredictability can win you one title in a decade but can't help you be in the race for three competitions in three years, which is what Pakistan need.
#1 Developing a team identity
This would be the biggest on-field challenge for Rizwan. International cricket is going through so many changes with "high-intent" cricket being the talk of the town -- not just in ODIs and T20Is but also in Test matches.
In the last few white-ball rubbers, Pakistan have tried to take inspiration from it and play entertaining, aggressive cirkcet. But it hasn't worked out because with constantly changing environments, they have given up on that too easily.
Rizwan's job would be to set an identity for his white-ball team in stone. Whether it's playing around him and Babar, or relentless attack, or focussing on taking 10 wickets with batting offering support, or using an all-rounder-heavy, multi-dimensional team -- he needs to choose one or two of these and stick with them.
Once he is able to find that identity which comes from the core of Pakistan, the team can be picked accordingly. Communication and gaining trust from everyone would be key because results might not go their way immediately.
But if he has the backing of the management till the Champions Trophy, this is the way to go about it and getting the best possible results. So often the Men in Green have looked like a disjointed bunch. It's high time they get their act together and play like a real team, with each individual equally aligned with a vision and an aim.