Blog: ‘Great things shouldn’t go that easily’

Societies grow through slow, incremental change but their collapse can be sudden & dramatic. Their collapse includes abrupt societal failures. Same goes with the team because team is not made by a person, but it is run by a few. Those few have the ability to control the team and have power to lead it to success, or else their absence would make it collapse. Those kind of people are taken as stars of the team, considered as strong pillars, and like a building a team also stands on its stars.

The two stalwarts of Pakistan cricket (Misbah ul Haq & Younus Khan) were instrumental in making Pakistan number 1 Test team in the world. Retirement of these two strongest pillars together can demolish the team.

We have history to suggest that when you look at West Indies, after Ambrose and Walsh retired, the performance of their team dropped terribly and it would be fair to say they haven’t come up to that mark still.

Sri Lankan team stars, Mahela Jawardena and Sangakara, also retired in quick succession which has left the Sri Lankan side with a huge gap to fill in.

It’s not just two names, it’s the star power that diminishes with them, which devalues the brand power of the team, so it can be contended here that there should be at least 1-2 years gap in Misbah and Younis Khan’s retirement so that brand Pakistan could not be devalued. Perhaps, we don’t want to repeat the ODI thing - Misbah and Afridi’s retirement at same time – which we once wanted.

Furthermore, there are serious prospects ahead that we may have to play qualifiers to make it to the World Cup 2019, so in order to avoid Test arena dip, you need that one big name still to play more sense of responsibility and strive to perform consistently.

Watching the national team lose can be tough to handle almost as much as watching them win gives you great joy. Losing is part of sports though, however this risk can be minimise with quality play, planning and team structuring as well.

No team wins or loses all the time, and imagine about your team to be through its good times again. Remember great comebacks & champions.

Champions like Misbah & Younus. Younis is first Pakistani to have scored 9,000+ runs in Test cricket, his 34 centuries are the highest number of Test centuries by any Pakistani. He is the only Pakistani to score a Test hundred against all the nine Test playing nations and 12th International player to achieve this milestone, the only batsman to have 50+ average in all the four innings of Tests.

While Misbah is Pakistan's most successful Test captain with 23 wins, fastest Test fifty (21 Balls) completed in 24 minutes against Australia in Abu Dhabi & joint second-fastest Test century (56 balls) against Australia on 2 November 2014 in Abu Dhabi.

He has the honour to have most Test centuries by any Pakistan Test skipper.