The title of this blog is the understatement of the century. The state of Pakistan Cricket has officially broken my brain. The entirety of the Champions Trophy felt like watching a loved one die a slow painful death, knowing there was nothing I could do to save them or give them any respite. Generally, once a loved one passes, and you’ve had enough time to grieve, you know they’re in a better place and can look back on all the fond memories you shared with them. Pakistan Cricket on the other hand, never seems to die. Instead they continue laying on their death bed, prolonging the pain, suffering, and misery. As a result your pal Zimbo needs a fresh start. I’ve been a perpetual optimist, a RizBar apologist, a Pakistani pace supremacist, and a Naseem Shah loyalist. It’s time to forget all that (except for stanning Naseem Shah) and become the one “ist” I never envisioned: A Realist.

In order for Pakistan Cricket to have any chance of resurrection, Mohsin Naqvi has got to go. He was the Chief Minister of Punjab and is the current Interior Minister of Pakistan. The man has no qualifications to run the Pakistan Cricket Board, nevertheless he’s yet another political appointee to the position in charge of the nation’s most popular sport.

His surgery has been botched. His stadium renovations led the PCB to an unfathomably large financial loss as hosts of the Champions Trophy. He bullshitted the public into believing India would come to Pakistan, only to run away from negotiations with his tail between his legs and agree to not play in each other’s country for the next couple of years. The man has not done a single good thing as chairman of the PCB, and he might be a CIA agent (not ideal). Pakistan have been humiliated in the two ICC tournaments under his tenure. If he had any shred of self respect or dignity, he would have turned in his resignation the second the tournament ended, but he doesn’t so we as fans need to have him murdered (metaphorically of course)

The asinine selection committee in charge of putting together one of the worst teams to ever represent our once esteemed cricketing nation, should be executed by firing squad, or at the very least disbanded and never allowed to espouse their cricketing opinions on television ever again. Sure they got derailed by Saim Ayub’s injury, but they didn’t have to go and screw everything else up. Making Babar open, dropping Abdullah Shafique, and bringing Imam-ul-Haq as Fakhar’s replacement are all mind-numbingly idiotic decisions. They opted to take only one specialist spinner and brought back Faheem Ashraf (a man who averages near 10 with the bat and 40 with the ball). Data crunching Hassan Cheema is a PSL merchant who has no actual cricketing brain and deserves to be tried in the court of public opinion. Aqib Javed, our conniving little power hungry rat of a head coach, needs to keep his grubby paws off of the national team and stick to finishing last with the Lahore Qalandars. He literally worked behind the scenes to get rid of respectable coached and then claimed that continuity of coaching is what is holding the boys in green back. CLOWN.

The reality is the entire Pakistani cricket structure needs to be stripped down and built back again from the ground up. The PCB doesn’t need surgery or rebranding, it needs a demolition. If an Army Chief can make a call and get players selected for a World Cup Squad, you’ve entirely lost the plot. Political interference has ruined Pakistan cricket at every level from the domestic circuit to the national team.

P.S. don’t think I don’t blame the players for our downfall. That’ll be in the next blog. Until then enjoy watching Pakistan get murdered by New Zealand.