By Nadeem Akram

After struggling to a face-saving win in the second Test, Pakistan should get through with its 'rebuilding' and start playing like professionals.

It would be a waste of space to state the obvious vis-a-vis the not-so-good performance of our cricket team in the last two matches they played at 'home grounds'. Enough has already been said and there is definitely a lot to be said. So I will leave the expert 'analyses' for the analysts, who pounce on every available opportunity to critically scrutinize others since they are no longer analyzed for being an analyst or a former player for that matter.

But when we talk of expert analysts, there's one particular analyst who does comes to mind. This fastidious gentleman's comprehension of the English language is limited to two words, and apparently he has acquired this uncanny knack to use the words 'match' and 'fixing' to perfection. Then there is this other gentleman scholar who throughout the Test at Faisalabad kept referring the Pakistan cricket team as 'talented' and 'mercurial'.

What kind of qualification is that for a team? A professional team, playing at the highest level of the game? There are better ways to describe a team's performance, even while making excuses on their behalf. For instance, professional, organized, cohesive, splintered and minnows are some of the examples the way professional teams operating in international circuit are classified. But talented and mercurial? What in the God's name does that mean? I would suggest the gentleman to browse 'Best of Navjot Sidhu' available on the Internet!

Millions of viewers, including myself, have wasted zillion man hours staring at the dismal images being beamed into our living rooms, watching in despair, game after game, Pakistani team getting out in a most shameful manner. Never once realizing that the players seen walking back to the pavilion with their heads tucked between their shoulders are 'professional': professionals as in being paid for what they do i.e. play cricket. We, the viewers, have to realize that we actually 'pay', in more than one way for these professionals to play havoc with our minds and our hard earned money. We, therefore, have this incontestable right to question their professionalism, and not be placated by comments such as 'mercurial' and 'talented'.

Professional sportsmen, 'as opposed to amateur athletes, have come to the fore due to increased audience and commercialization of spectator sport by mass media. "As a result, more sports-people can afford to make sport their primary career, and sports-people often attain superstar or a celebrity status." Maybe Bob Woolmer needs to read this definition to some of the older, more senior players who let us down day in and day out and get away with it.

It is not 'just a game', as some wise men claim after each defeat that Pakistani cricket team suffer, which is aplenty these days. It is more than just a game, cricket is the bread and butter of these players, and 'who cares' attitude in the middle, which happens to be a day in the office in real terms, cannot and should not be tolerated by anyone for any reason what so ever. Period.

What we hear instead is one excuse after another for the poor performance of our cricket team. The oft cited reason these days is that the team is going through a team building process. Can someone please enlighten us not-so-learned folks about this rebuilding process? What do we mean by this process? What are the objectives? Is there a road map for achieving the set objectives? Who is in-charge of this process? Who all are involved in it? What are the timelines? Where does Moin Khan fit in this process? Talking of Moin Khan and team building, it has been reported that Inzamam wants him in the team citing interdependence as the reason for his inclusion; interdependence being the key element of team building process. Agreed!

But the problem is that Moin brings with him the 19th century wisdom which is hardly required in modern cricket. Gone are the days, and thankfully Miandad as well, when one could afford to steal quick singles or cheeky stroke play for easy boundaries. The modern cricket is all about planning and execution of an innings in both forms of the game.

The level of cricket has gone up more than a few notches during the last decade and Moin Khan failed to read the script during his sojourn. In fact, he happens to be a bad influence on the younger players who have picked up a bad habit or two during this team building process. One does not have to be an expert analyst or an ex-cricketer to notice a number of players including Inzamam and Yohanna getting out while playing silly shots that worked for a player or two in the previous century. Still they are let off the hook by their former buddy as being 'mercurial' yet 'talented'. How long can we afford to take this bull?

If Woolmer intends to succeed, and I sincerely hope that he does, he needs to do more than just don a baseball glove and indulge his charges. He should, and he must, take these players to task, literally. For starters, he can introduce a 'performance appraisal system' for the permanent members of the Pakistani team. However, similar standards should be followed when it comes to appraising the players. It makes perfect sense to send a young apprentice back to the academy to brush up on his skills. However, when it comes to the senior players, Woolmer does not have that option available to him. The senior, more accomplished, players do not require coaching. What they need instead is counselling, serious career counselling.

They need to be told in so many words to cut down on their bad days at the office or they would be cut to size. Longevity, seniority, previous performances, dependence and similar exigencies of service, normally applied in their case, should not matter while evaluating their employability with the organization. An underperforming senior player should be placed on a three month's probation and if he fails to improve upon his performance during the probationary period he should simply be fired, and under no circumstances should he be allowed to snivel his way back to the nets. After all these are all professionals we are talking about, and this is the professional way to improve performance. There is no rocket science here. It works!

To illustrate my point, look at the way Pakistani team responded to the 'sacking' of Moin Khan and Asim Kamal, who should not have been included in the first place, in their post adjustment outing in Karachi. The corrections seemingly had a therapeutic effect on the entire team as demonstrated by the way they bowled, fielded and managed to get the opposition all out in a single day. The 'huddle' effect was quite visible the second day, and somehow, it somehow vanished amid Jaysuriya's assault during the latter half of the third day. Thank God for Danish and his leg-breaks that averted yet another embarrassing situation in the offing. Come to think of it, Danish is not even part of the rebuilding process. Thankfully he has learnt a thing or two in Essex that came handy on the fourth day. And on the fifth day, Pakistan, despite some atrocious fielding, won the second Test, levelling the series one all. But that is not good enough.

Let the record show, that the rebuilding process have yielded a 50:50 results in both forms of the game under Woolmer's rebuilding process. This, needless to say, needs further improvement.