One cannot believe there was no curfew on the players before such an important match. It’s a standard practice that players are in their rooms and preferably in bed by 8 pm the night before a big match.
No wives or girlfriends should have been allowed near the players for at least a week before the game. Instead, the Pakistani players were out partying with their wives/friends the night before a crucial match.
Pakistan captain can be seen yawning in the field, displaying his lack of sleep resulting in such shoddy performance and lack of leadership. It is obvious that the players and the management did not take this contest seriously. Otherwise, a night out before such an important match would have never been allowed.
We have the experience of arranging many professional level events in North America. Heads would have rolled if any of our teams had displayed such lack of professionalism or commitment.
A notable example is our event, ‘North American Cricket Series,’ featuring cricket matches between the West Indies and England teams in the late ’90s. Clive Lloyd was the manager of the West Indies team. He had his team in their rooms by 8 pm and they were under strict curfew not to leave their rooms – this team included players like Viv Richards, Lara, Haynes, Walsh, Ambrose, Richie Richardson and more.
While the English players (all Test players) partied the night before the matches in New York and Toronto. Sure enough, the English team was soundly beaten by the West Indies. The fans were disappointed and upset by the lack of competition and we were dismayed that the English team did not live up to their commitment and wasted our efforts and resources.
This match between and India was no ordinary event, this match between two arch rivals warranted a massive amount of preparedness. Instead, the entire team took this match way too easy – their deficit of commitment showed, they lacked professionalism and did not display any deep sense of responsibility.
If this was not the case, then these players should not have been out partying the night before an important match. These are grown men, they should have known better, shown enough intelligence and judgement to abstain from such a lack of judgement.
Clearly, Pakistani players did not appreciate the honor entrusted in them by the nation, the responsibility on their shoulders. They showed a simple inability to understand the gravity of the situation and cannot be trusted with the importance of representing a nation in an international event. The total revamping of a protocol is warranted in the Pakistan team.
Winning and losing is part of the game but not taking the match seriously by a team of professional players is a humiliating disgrace. Even school and college teams take their games more seriously than the behaviour shown by Pakistan’s national team.
The person who allowed the team to have the night out before this kind of epic game should be fired immediately, without any delay or any excuse.
An example needs to be set for all to remember that such a flaw in judgement has personal consequences. If such action is not taken, this humiliation will be repeated again and again.