What the heck is going on?!

On the day Geoff Lawson was supposed to arrive in Pakistan to take over the reins of the team, it seems that the entire enterprise of international Pakistani cricket is threatening to fall apart.

For the last few days, there has been a reasonable amount of drama, with Shoaib Akhtar and his fines, and then the supposed threat by Shoaib Malik and a few other players to not participate in the Twenty20 cup. While these have been fairly concerning, not much has made it into the media since the first rumours came out. Yet, todays news turns all of those shenanigans into minor brew hahas.

First came the news that Razzaq had announced his retirement from international cricket, due to his unhappiness over being dropped for the Twenty20 cup, followed very shortly by his signing a County Cricket contract. Then came the ICL announcement of the players signed to date, and within that list were Razzaq and Farhat, which we knew about before. Yet, the list also included Inzamam and Mohammad Yousuf.

While reactions from various cricketing forums is still awaited, these developments were probably not what Geoff Lawson had in mind for his first day. Yousuf has been the lynch pin of the Pakistani batting lineup, and one must wonder if there is something more deep seated here, than just not being selected for the Twenty20 cup. Rumours have been rampant that the PCB has been trying to rid the team of any links with Inzamam and the overt religiosity on display during his tenure as captain. Yousuf was a large part of that, and Razzaq was also fairly close to Inzamam. Has there been more going on behind the scenes? Only time will tell.

The Razzaq decision to retire, to be honest, smacks a lot of Shahid Afridi's surprise announcement a while ago. Ticked off, and perhaps feeling disrespected, Razzaq has taken the sour grapes approach, and said I didn't want to play anymore anyhow. It will probably get reversed sooner or later by Razzaq. Yet, what will the PCB do with Inzy, Yousuf and Razzaq after they have already said they will ban on all players signing with the ICL? What does it say about theses players' commitment to the Pakistani cricket team, if they were willing to risk their place in the team for the ICL?

The next few days should be interesting, in how the PCB chooses to respond to the newest fiasco in Pakistani cricket. One really gets the feeling that Nasim Ashraf and the PCB will have to do more than fiasco creation to try to fix this situation.