LAHORE: It was a smoggy Wednesday afternoon in November, and Mickey Arthur was puzzled. He stood on a balcony at Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium, the headquarters of the Pakistan Cricket Board. He’d been speaking to the PCB’s Cricket Operations Director Usman Wahla, discussing logistics ahead of Pakistan’s Test tour of Australia in December. He’d been asked to wait after a meeting with the chairman had broken for a recess, and he couldn’t understand what was taking so long.
Most of the cricketing world’s focus, even in Pakistan, wasn’t on Lahore. It was World Cup semifinal day, and New Zealand were giving India a bit of a scare in a tall chase, with Daryl Mitchell and Kane Williamson’s entertaining partnership ensuring the game in Mumbai would be a contest rather than preparation for a coronation. In Pakistan cricket, however, a storm was brewing, and attention would soon shift from Mumbai to Lahore.
Arthur was at the Gaddafi for a performance review called for by the PCB management committee head Zaka Ashraf following Pakistan’s relatively underwhelming World Cup campaign; they were knocked out at the group stage with four wins and five defeats. Arthur, Pakistan’s team director, was already looking ahead, focusing on a high-profile three-Test tour of Australia, a country where Pakistan had lost every Test they had played since 1995.”At the end of the World Cup we went back to Lahore,” Arthur tells ESPNcricinfo in his first interview since his exit. “We had planned the whole Australian tour, so much so that we had thought about teams and combinations. We arrived in Pakistan and there was silence initially.
“And then Zaka wanted a review meeting of the World Cup. We went to that, I did a presentation, Rehan [ul Haq, the team manager] did a presentation. Grant [Bradburn, the head coach] spoke, the whole management team was in this meeting.
“There was a recess and we were starting a camp two days later. I was still on the balcony organising with Usman Wahla what our logistics were going to be. And I wondered why there was such a break in this review. And then I got a little whisper in my ear that Zaka wanted to see me in a separate office in the museum at the HPC [High Performance Centre]. I went in, he asked me a whole lot of questions and then he said, ‘look, we’re going to remove the whole support staff and captain, basically, and that was it.'”
“Hafeez was the team director like Mickey and had to manage things, which he did in a professional way. At critical situations during international tours, Mickey had to fly and he had refused to join Pakistan because of his contract with Derbyshire county. He was basically coaching online. I have all my respect for him, but how can you do coaching on Zoom?”There was something even more immediate, though. Babar Azam, Pakistan’s captain in all three formats, was also at the performance review. He was told he was being removed, and opted to issue a statement of reluctant resignation. The PCB’s official version suggested he was only told he would be removed from ODI and T20I captaincy, although this is a version that has been disputed.While Arthur does not rule out a return to Pakistan, he admits his enthusiasm for it has dimmed.
“I still followed Pakistan cricket and I’ll always follow it,” he says. “But the vigour and thirst and passion I have for Pakistan cricket waned a little bit after that. To be brutally honest, I think Pakistan cricket is in a very disappointing place. There’s a massive amount of talent there, There are some world-class players, not just talented players. They’re not given the support structure that they need to flourish.
“The one thing we had in 2019 and from the time we won the [2017] Champions Trophy to the end of it was an environment where the players were pushed. There was a lot demanded of them, but I backed every one of those boys 100%. So then they went out and played for the team instead of playing for them themselves.
