Handling a hurricane

Bob Woolmer's arrival as Pakistan's coach coincided with a change of guard at the cricket board. After a bumpy start, he has begun turning Pakistan into a team that could fulfil its potential, and even exceed it. For Woolmer to control the volatile climate swirling around Pakistan would be remarkable, but one cloud still hangs over the team - one that stretches to the horizon and may still dampen the prospects of Pakistan cricket.

The cloud comes in the shape of the man Wasim Akram suggested is an essential match-winning component of the team, the one Imran Khan advised to take legal action against the board. The cloud has a silver lining, but can Woolmer's team find it? This is, of course, about Shoaib Akhtar, the Rawalpindi Express - although Sexpress might be a better description if we consider the common criticism of Shoaib as some kind of unreconstructed glamour puss.

The trouble with Shoaib is that the Pakistani authorities are at a loss for ways in which to manage him - not a new problem but an apparently insoluble one. Woolmer, to his credit, began with fighting talk, offering to usher Shoaib towards enlightenment. But Shoaib, it seems, doesn't do enlightenment. He does parties, nightclubs, fast bikes, designer shades, and probably women. Another thing he doesn't do is take to criticism of his commitment. Frankly, I agree with him. I'm not sure how someone who bowls at between 90 and 100mph lacks commitment, but this is a criticism that Shoaib has had to live with.

Another criticism that he has had to suffer is the persistent charge of ill-discipline. What makes this worse is that the accusation has come at him, more than once, from the direction of his captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq. Once could be deemed to be a slip of the tongue but Inzamam's repetition of this slur betrays a fundamental rift between him and Shoaib. The answer could be simple in that the two are such different personalities that they find it hard to understand each other. However deep the rift - and it is clear that there is one - Woolmer's job is to bring his two best players together. Clearly, Woolmer doesn't need me to tell him that but if the word doing the rounds, that Woolmer himself has given up on Shoaib, is true then I believe Woolmer needs to rethink. The difference between Pakistan merely doing well and challenging for the top may well be Shoaib's pace - and no amount of worthy medium-pacers will make up for the absence of it.

In the end, of course, it is a management problem, and Pakistan cricket's inability to utilise Shoaib's talents would be a reprehensible failure. Woolmer appears to have bottled Shahid Afridi's genius; he needs to do it with Shoaib. In the meantime, Shoaib has vowed to prove his fitness and form as the world's No. 1 fast bowler. If that does happen, despite him having been left out of the tour party to the West Indies, then Inzamam, Woolmer, and the cricket board will no doubt argue that their management and selection strategy has succeeded. I'd beg to differ. The career of Pakistan's current best bowler is in the balance, and only in the balance because of the way he has been singled out for a childish strategy of reward and punishment. Woolmer must have realised by now that neither the cricket board nor their captain have the skills to handle a player of Shoaib's personality. The resurrection of Shoaib will require Woolmer's dedication. It is a challenge he must not shirk if he is to lift the dark clouds hovering over the future of Shoaib Akhtar and Pakistan's development.