18 February 2026
Karachi (sitting here in this tiny café, coffee’s gone stone cold, my head still stuck in last night’s disaster)
Guys… honestly, can we just stop this already?
I mean, come on. Last night India absolutely hammered us again. We needed 176 to win and we collapsed to 114 all out. T20 World Cup 2026, Group A, Colombo. Right now we’re dangling in third place – India sitting pretty at the top, USA second, us barely hanging on. Today we’ve got Namibia. Win this and we should scrape into Super 8. Lose it… well, you know the story. But look, this post isn’t really about today’s game. This is me losing my mind over what PCB has been doing for years.
Stop this stupid “King kar de ga” nonsense. Seriously. Stop it.
Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi, Rizwan – these three have been turned into the permanent poster boys of Pakistan cricket. Every single sponsor wants them in the frame. Every billboard, every promo, every bloody thumbnail – it’s them. Commentators keep hammering the same line: “If Babar gets in, we win this.” Yaar, what is this bakwas? Cricket is a team game! One guy – no matter how good – cannot carry eleven players on his back every single time.
Look at Australia for five seconds. Do they have one “king”? No. One match Pat Cummins takes five wickets, next game Travis Head smashes everyone, then Starc comes in swinging like it’s 2005. The team just… works. England same thing – Stokes one day, Buttler the next, Root when it matters. Anyone can be the hero.
But us? We’ve turned the entire team into a marketing campaign. Players aren’t talent anymore – they’re bloody commodities. The people running PCB these days? Marketers. Full stop. All they care about is brand visibility, sponsor happiness, social media likes. That’s why you see exactly the same XI against Zimbabwe, against Nepal, against Australia’s B team, and now against proper full-strength India. Same faces. Same combinations. Same story.
Where is performance-based selection? Nowhere. Fresh faces? Nope. Rotation policy? Laughable. New partnerships, new bowling changes? Forget it. Why? Because god forbid a new guy comes in and has a bad day – sponsor might pull out, brand value drops two points, Twitter goes mad. So they play it “safe”. Pile everything on one or two big names. If the “king” fires – hero worship. If he doesn’t – blame game starts and the rest of the team disappears.
I’m telling you straight: we need to build Pakistan cricket so that it’s damn hard to pick out one single “face of the team”.
Spread the bloody talent! Give proper chances to Abrar Ahmed, Usman Khan, Salman Agha, Sahibzada Farhan – not one-off cameos, proper runs in the side. Make the team so balanced and deep that if Babar has a shocker, the batting doesn’t fall apart like a house of cards. If Shaheen has an off day, someone else steps up with the new ball. That’s how real teams win trophies.
This “King Kar De Ga” narrative is killing us. It puts insane pressure on that one guy and turns everyone else into passengers. Then when the king fails (because kings are not God, they are also living beings, even kings have off days), the whole team looks like amateurs.
PCB – if anyone’s actually reading this:
- Select on form and performance, not on Instagram followers or sponsor demands.
- Rotate players properly – stop treating reserves like furniture.
- Take domestic cricket seriously and blood new talent from there.
- Build a proper team-first culture, not star-first.
- Tell sponsors the truth: the TEAM is the brand. Not one individual.
Today we play Namibia. I hope – I really hope – the boys turn up, play smart, win big, fix the NRR mess. But even if we qualify, this deeper rot won’t go away until we kill this “king kar de ga” fairy tale.
What do you reckon? Am I being too harsh or is this exactly what’s wrong?
Drop your thoughts below.
Twitter @MoizMurtaza
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