The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat Pakistan cricket team captain Muhammad Yousuf has said that T20 cricket is affecting Pakistan’s performance in test cricket. He made these comments after losing the Boxing Day test match to Australia. I believe that it is not the T20 cricket which is hampering Pakistan’s test cricket but wrong selection for each format is to be blamed. Pakistan have lost last three series in Australia 3-0 , 3-0 and 2-1 respectively under different captains and at a time when there was no T20 cricket around. So blaming T20 is not the answer to our problems. Instead embracing it as part of future of cricket will make the job easier. Pakistan has bundles of talent in its domestic cricket but we keep insisting on using the same players for every format and even when cricket board shows some courage to leave these powerful players out, the powerful lobby in Pakistani media comes into action and put so much pressure on the cricket board that they have to bring these players back into the t...

By Sikander Hayat It has been reported that in the Khost province of Afghanistan a suicide bomber has killed 8 CIA officers. The bomber was an Afghan Army officer and was well known to his victims. In a separate incident in Kandahar, four soldiers and a journalist were killed Wednesday by a powerful improvised explosive device in the worst loss of Canadian life in Afghanistan in two-and-a-half years. The five deaths occurred as the soldiers in armoured vehicles patrolled in what was considered to be a safe part of southern Kandahar city. The military did not immediately release any names because of problems notifying family. However, journalists on the base identified the reporter killed as Michelle Lang, 34, a reporter with the Calgary Herald. She was in the back of an armoured vehicle at the time. In one day coalition forces have lost 13 personnel signalling an increase in Taliban increasing their activity in the southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan. This is also significant...

By Sikander Hayat 7th National Finance Commission Award has been signed into agreement today in the port city of Gwadar, Baluchistan. Punjab and Federal Government have given up some of their share to meet the needs of Baluchistan and NWFP. This is a historic occasion for Pakistan because it is first time that all federating units have reached consensus without any major disagreements. A new formula has been devised to distribute resources among the centre and the federating units. Under the award population will be given 82 per cent weightage, poverty 10.3 per cent, revenue collection five per cent (2.5 per cent revenue generation, 2.5 per cent revenue collection) and area 2.7 per cent. Under the new NFC Award, the federation met the demand of the provincial governments for a greater share in national resources. The provincial share of the divisible pool would increase from 47.5 per cent to 56 per cent in the first year of NFC and 57.5 per cent in the remaining years of the Award. Un...

By Sikander Hayat Pakistan lost the Boxing Day test match without a fight on the last day. The whole team was practically out before the lunch session and Australia cleaned up the remaining two wickets after lunch. As I said in my earlier posts, this Pakistan line up is capable of around 250 runs in an innings and anything beyond 250 is out of their reach and there was ample evidence of this fact in the match. Australia won the match convincingly and it seems that they will win the series 3-0 as well. After all Pakistan lost the last two series in Australia 3-0 so it wont be much of a surprise but this Australian team does not have McGrath or Warne. Pakistan must somehow muster courage so that individuals can score hundreds as it seems that after scoring about 30 to 50 runs they think that they have done their jobs and there place in the team is secure. The other most important thing is the fielding. Pakistan lost the match because of their abysmal fielding on the first day when they g...

By Sikander Hayat Why is everyone so hell bent on removing a democratically elected president by any means possible. Is it not the job of the people of Pakistan to decide after another three years to give their verdict on the performance of this president. Zardari has made mistakes but has spent eleven years in jail and nothing has been proved against him yet. Please give democracy a chance so that people from Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan can keep their trust in the federation. PML (N) & PML (Q), both Punjabi dominated parties, are asking for Zardari's resignation on moral grounds but what about houses in Park Lane London and businesses in Spain. Now Nawaz Sharif is trying to pretend that he is the cleanest person in Pakistan. They are all corrupt but it is only the job of the people to tell who should be running the country. I am not a fan of Zardari, I know that he is president because all notable Bhutto’s are dead but I cannot second guess the choice of Pakistani people. Army...

By Sikander Hayat Apart from the dogged batting and great bowling from Muhammad Amer there was very little to cheer about Pakistan’s innings. Muhammad Amer played an innings which must have showed the other “proper” batsmen how to at least resist constant onslaught by the Australians. Umer Akmal showed some class but played too many shots in quick succession and paid the price for it. He looks the future of Pakistan batting by the way he played but need to choose the right ball to hit. Misbah played well but ran out of partners in the end which shows that unless top three in the Pakistan line up score runs, Pakistan has no chance in hell to win against the major oppositions. Australia now has over 300 runs lead with seven wickets remaining and two full days to go. They would look to score about 450 and give Pakistan a day and three quarters to save the test match. It will be highly unlikely that Pakistan can save this test match from here onwards unless there is something out of the or...

By Sikander Hayat Pakistan’s top order collapsed once again as a house of cards. Ricky Ponting took pity on Pakistan bowlers and declared the Australian innings at 454/5 because there was no penetration in the Pakistan bowling attack which was severely demoralised by the absolutely abysmal catching. At the end of day 2, Pakistan were 109/4 and all too familiar Pakistan batting collapse is well underway on the same pitch where night watchman Nathan Hauritz scored 75 without much trouble. Pakistanis never get bamboozled by the surface really because the average score by any Pakistani test team is around 250 no matter how hard or easy the pitch may be. It will be a minor miracle if Pakistan can draw this match from here onwards. Batsmen at the crease are Muhammad Aamir and Umar Akmal. Yes, the same Umar Akmal who gave Australia such a good start by dropping Simon Katich.

By Sikander Hayat No player should be allowed to play in the Pakistan cricket team if they cannot field properly. Pakistan drooped at least three catches to let Australia off the hook when Australia should have been 60/2 at one stage but two simple catches were dropped by Umar Akmal & Misbah-ul-Haq. Then other Akmal brother Kamran Akmal dropped Ricky Ponting off the bowling of Muhammad Asif at the start of Ricky Ponting. Pakistani players, it seems, cannot catch to save their lives and a test match in which they should have established their authority at the very start on the boxing day will now probably end up with Pakistan on the losing side. Pakistani players not only drop catches but they laugh after dropping them as if nothing had happened. The prime example was the catch drooped by Misbah when he drooped Shane Watson and then grinned for what seemed like an eternity as if he felt no shame at all. I believe that Pakistan cricket board should only pick players who can and are w...

By Sikander Hayat Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the founder of Pakistan and today on 25th of December is his birth anniversary. From the day one, there has been an argument in Pakistan about what Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be. A secular state or a theocracy. I believe he wanted neither because Pakistan got its independence from the British in the name of Islam so Islam cannot be sidelined but also it cannot be a theocracy. A theocracy stops the practice of other religions but Pakistan allows it. So what is Pakistan these days. Before the reign of terror by Zia Ul Haq, who used Islam to prolong his dictatorship, Pakistan was quite a liberal country at its heart but Zia robbed Pakistan of her traditional tolerance and instead tried to turned it into a factory for producing Jihadis to fight in the Afghan Jihad against the Soviets. A whole generation of Pakistanis grew up thinking that they are the sole protectors of Islam in the world. They have to fight every oppressor of Muslims in ...

By Sikander Hayat Peshawar has been targeted again by the terrorists killing five innocent people and injuring many others. Twenty seven people are injured. The blast occurred in busy Mall Road, home to government offices, banks and private companies. According to the bomb disposal squad, about eight to 10kg of explosives were used in the attack. The attack came two days after a teenage suicide bomber attacked a Pakistan journalists' club in Peshawar, killing three people in an unprecedented assault on the media.

By Sikander Hayat There has seldom been a player in the history of Pakistan cricket who had so much potential but showed very little results. Muhammad Sami is such an enigma who bowls at 90 miles an hour but takes very few wickets. I personally believe that playing with Shoaib Akhtar destroyed whatever chance he had of learning as Shoaib had other things on his mind than helping a youngster who was trying to make something out of his career. Muhammad Sami was highly spoken of by Imran Khan who was a good judge of talent but Sami somehow failed to succeed in international cricket. Now that he is 28 years old and potentially with a mature head on his shoulders, he has got this final opportunity to prove the selectors right. He still has time to prove to the world that he is the real deal but this is the last chance. He must keep this fact in his mind.

Dynamic but injury-prone New Zealand fast bowler Shane Bond announced his retirement from Test cricket Wednesday, saying his body was no longer up to the rigours of the five-day game. ‘It’s been a tough call, because Test cricket remains the ultimate form of the game, but I’m comfortable I’ve made the right choice,’ the 34-year-old said. Bond’s latest comeback in the Test series against Pakistan ended after the first Test – in which he took eight wickets – when an abdominal muscle tear ruled him out of the remaining two matches. ‘I’ve worked really hard to get back to Test match fitness – it’s what I’ve been working towards for the past two years – and I feel I gave as much as I could,’ Bond said. ‘But looking back, so many of my injuries have come during Test cricket.’ ‘Unfortunately my body just won’t let me continue to play at that level, given the workload and demands of Test cricket.’ Bond played only 18 Tests after his debut in 2001 because of a series of injuries and his involve...

By Sikander Hayat Gwadar cannot prosper until it is properly connected to the world. There has been a good news in that respect that Gwadar will be provided money by the federal government to build a new airport in the city . According to Daily Dawn, the government has decided to provide Rs6.18 billion for construction of an international airport in Gwadar. The total cost of the project is Rs7.5 billion. The government of Oman will provide a grant of $17.5 million. A senior member of the Planning Commission said the decision had been taken under the government’s Balochistan development policy. The CAA has acquired 4,300 acres. It estimates that the airport will be operational by 2020 and it will be able to handle large passenger and cargo aircraft. The second phase of the airport is scheduled to be completed by 2030 and the final phase by 2050 when it will have the capacity to handle more than one million passengers and 50,000 tons of cargo a year. The existing airport built...