Pakistan: A one-man team?

There have been moments in Pakistan cricket when it looked like it was playing as a team and a well-knit unit. The World Cup in 1992 was one prime example where everybody chipped in with his part, even in the presence of mega-stars like Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram and Mushtaq Ahmed around whom the team played under the awsome leadership of Imran Khan. Whenever Pakistan does that the results always testify. The last two tours of India were more examples of the same.

But unfortunately this has been too few and far between and hence the lack of such consistent performances.

Thinking of that brings me to a point I was wondering about after reading this article on cricket.org which said that Pakistan did play as a one-man team on the recent Indian tour and everyone chipped in. True as it may be, but if you look closely at the history/team composition of Pakistani team, we've always had these *big* stars in our team and the team expected them to pull off miracles out of their hats any day. This might have been rare in the beginning but after a decade or two we have been consistently producing mega-stars, who are so charismatic in their own ways that they can turn the match around single-handedly. Javed Miandad, Asif Iqbal, Zaheer Abbas, Imran Khan, Saeed Anwar, Salim Malik, 2 Ws, Shoaib Akhtar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, occasionally Ijaz/Afridi etc., to name a few, were solo match-winners. This might have induced a (negative) dependency on these pivotal players and hence the inconsistency we have been seeing all these years (in case they dont fire). This might have have led to complacency and lack of vision/realisation of the importance/responsibilty of each member in the team.

On the other hand, New Zealand have never had too many mega-stars in their team (except Martin Crowe, Morrison, Chris Cairns etc.), so in order for them to induce a victory everybody has to play their part. So they always look like a much-better-knit unit (even if they dont have the kind of success rate to boast of). Similarly Sri Lanka although they have had their share of stars in the shape of DeSilva, Ranatunga, Murlitharan, Jayasuria, Vaas etc. but their core approach to the game defies dependence on a single player even when they had a house-full of stars.