Pakistan should invest in their pace bowlers, particularly Sohail Khan © Faras Ghani

Five-nil should not look bad on paper but this one does. The piece of paper in question is the team sheet, which has been rearranged so often during the Zimbabwe series that it is almost impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions. Pakistan's selectors will say that they have responded to the calls for new faces but they have betrayed their own uncertainty with such haphazard substitutions. Many of the young players were given solitary opportunities against Zimbabwe, an insufficient experiment to judge Pakistan's bench strength.

Assuming Australia do visit, Pakistan's only consolation can be that Ricky Ponting's team is enduring a few problems of its own although these are insignificant when compared with Pakistan's selection confusion.

I would, though, hazard two conclusions. First, that Sarfraz Ahmed deserves a longer run in the first team, and second that from the array of bowlers that Pakistan experimented with the selectors should invest in those with pace, for example Sohail Khan.

Rarely has a five-nil result been so empty and so devoid of meaning. Another lesson I'm sure that will go unlearned in the grand tradition of Pakistan's cricket development strategy.

	Nasim Ashraf, as board chairman, should not only delegate responsibility to the selection committee but also take responsibility in the event of failure © AFP

A bad process, a management consultant would tell you, usually produces a bad outcome. Little wonder, then, that Pakistan's selection "process" rarely pleases anybody. The current bickering between board and team management is just another variation on the theme of internal division that prevents the key players in Pakistan cricket from developing the team in a coherent, constructive, and successful fashion.

At the heart of the problem lies a tussle for control, a power struggle that is eternally unresolved. Captain, coach, chief of selectors, and chairman of the board are all potential rulers of the rabble--and it will remain a rabble as long as the hierarchy fluctuates with a frenzied frequency.

The last time Pakistan's selection process worked properly was when Imran Khan was in total control. That was a fortunate time for Pakistan cricket but an unfortunate lesson was learned. Imran's success suggested that the captain should be responsible for all selection matters, indeed it is an approach he has strongly advocated since.

But Imran's triumph rested on at least two foundations. First, Pakistan cricket was desperate for world recognition, a recognition that any era before Imran's captaincy had never achieved. Second, and most importantly, Imran had the personality and the ability to pull off his dictatorial strategy.

Many of his acolytes tried to follow. Wasim Akram came closest to emulating Imran's on-field success while Inzamam-ul Haq was nearest to total control. Yet none could match his leadership and determination, inevitably leaving a large hole for bureaucrats, selectors, and coaches to jump in to.

Who can now say what Pakistan's selection strategy and process is? In publicly acknowledging a "healthy debate" Dr Nasim Ashraf is hiding a fundamental disagreement. Everybody wants to rule but nobody is capable of it. It is in this situation that a good process can mask the inadequacies of individuals. No such process exists.

Pakistan fans look on with dismay as whims, fancies, and power fluctuations dictate selection of the national team. Merit looks to be an irrelevance. Selection decisions baffle, disappoint, and infuriate.

Might not the Zimbabwe series have been an ideal opportunity to give experience to Sarfraz Ahmed to mitigate the risk of Kamran Akmal's chronic bad form? Why did the selectors even bother with Samiullah Khan, a player I last saw lying on his back at a net practice ignoring Bob Woolmer, who was pleading with him to join the net session? What was the logic in leaving out Shoaib Akhtar when he was in desperate need of match fitness?

Readers of this blog will have questions of their own. Some people might argue, though, that healthy debates about selection are the essence of cricket's fascination. But the selection sickness in Pakistan cricket has become a terminal disease that requires urgent intervention.

In the absence of a modern day Imran Khan, Pakistan has the Australian model to follow. And this does not mean simply paying lip service to it but implementing it properly. A successful process requires three fundamentals: a high-quality selection committee of impeccable integrity, a captain and coach willing to acquiesce power and desperate to succeed with the selected team, and a cricket board chairman enlightened enough to delegate responsibility to the selection committee but take responsibility in the event of failure.

Sadly, Pakistan cricket has none of these three elements in place. Worse still, none of the individuals involved has shown the guts or the selflessness to make it happen. Millions upon millions of supporters are desperate for a process that will nurture success rather than turn their hopes into dust.

The selection process is sick but we are all sicker for having to endure it.

	Abdul Razzaq is an ideal one-day player even if his place in the Test team is worth challenging © AFP

With injuries and poor form asking fundamental questions about Pakistan's one-day squad for South Africa, the selectors have answered with a vote for thrills--and probably quite a few spills and missed heartbeats.

The recall of Abdul Razzaq was expected. When fit, Razzaq is an ideal one-day player even if his place in the Test team is worth challenging. Shabbir Ahmed's return was inevitable too given Pakistan's injured fast bowlers, but it's hard to see how he can have been unfit last week yet fit now.

Razzaq, of course, is a lower middle-order whirlwind. In combination with Shahid Afridi and Imran Nazir--who have both made surprising returns--Pakistan's one-day team has just adopted the shock and awe strategy.

Afridi did well in his season of domestic cricket in South Africa although he looks to have opted out of domestic cricket in his own country, something we were told he would have to succeed in to win selection. Nazir, by contrast, has performed due diligence by rebuilding his reputation at home and it is a surprise that the selectors have resisted recalling him until now.

Whatever the machinations, I'm all for this daring approach. Now is the time to get these big-hitting players in form before the World Cup. They add an explosive capability to the more trenchant qualities of Pakistan's classy middle-order. There is a risk though that these bombers will inflict more damage on their own men than the opposition.

Call me reckless but I'd have it no other way. The Pakistani cricket team has been most successful when it has attacked, and with Afridi, Razzaq, and Nazir in your batting line-up, attack is turned into all-out assault. Hold onto your sun-hats.

	Shahid Afridi's absence in the one-dayers may just be a turn-off for the fans © Getty Images

This is a World Cup year. Pakistan are about to play their final home one-day series before that tournament. The campaign needs to be relaunched with a sense of optimism and an aura of positivity. Conditions in Pakistan are likely to be closer to the West Indies than conditions in South Africa will be.

Your star player, your talisman, your aggressor, your match-winner needs to rediscover his confidence. A combination of the West Indian attack and home conditions are an ideal formula to reinvigorate your champion and your campaign. The decision looks straightforward. The selectors, though, leave him out. Shahid Afridi out? The mind boggles and the logic wobbles. Nice one. Another triumph of stupidity from the men who want to be paid to do an important job badly.

Like water torture he keeps drip dripping away. Wasim Bari--once Pakistan's overrated wicketkeeper and now an even more overrated chairman of selectors--has managed to see off more administrators and cricketers than can be good for Pakistan cricket. Bari, Pakistan's Teflon, once drew his inspiration from his friend and writer Omar Kurieshi. You wonder where he seeks ideas now? You can't imagine that his fellow selectors, including the legendary Ehteshamuddin, the Test cricket misfit who was barely able to stagger off the pitch at Headingley, offer much in the way of piercing insights. If people are paid what they are worth then it's possibly understandable that Pakistan's selectors remain unpaid.

The problem with being in post for too long is that people can predict your patterns of behaviour. Bari, we know pretty well, has a penchant for recalling once-great-hopes and sticking with other once-great-hopes well past their sell-by date. What many have feared in Bari is that he has a natural reluctance to take a risk, an inability to see beyond the obvious selection and pluck a star from relative obscurity.

The educated gambles that have brought Pakistan cricket the riches of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and Inzamam-ul Haq have all but disappeared. You might make an argument that these educated gambles should not supersede the aspirants who have emerged successfully through the system. But the Pakistan system of developing international cricketers is so haphazard and unreliable that an educated gamble might well be as good as observing somebody's stunning run in domestic cricket. But to make an educated gamble succeed you require sound judgement.

To begin to gamble you need to begin to take risks, and Bari doesn't strike me as a man who risks much. The most recent influx of new blood into the Pakistan team--Mohammad Asif apart--came during Aamir Sohail's tenure as chairman of selectors. Aamir had his own failings but an aversion to risk taking was not among them.

This West Indies series, for instance, must have been worth an educated gamble? With Pakistan's batting in urgent need of a future star it beggars belief that Shahid Yousuf was not given the opportunity of a home debut. By all accounts, he has the potential to make it in international cricket and, whisper it quietly, he plays straight. This series would seem to be an ideal launch pad.

This is not to dismiss Yasir Hameed's selection, one of the many lost talents of the Bari era. Indeed, Yasir's opportunity offers hope to aspiring cricketers in Pakistan's remote northern villages where there is abundant talent but pitiful opportunity to display it--his village is a few kilometres beyond my family village of Bakote. You might imagine that the selectors could have found room for both Yasir and Shahid?

Add to this the feeble, venom-free, bowling line up that Pakistan have conjured up--the last time I saw Samiullah Niazi in action he was failing to take part in a net session for no good reason--and you can understand why Brian Lara is licking his lips and Pakistan supporters are underwhelmed with anticipation for the forthcoming series.

After a catalogue of disasters and unending misery, Pakistan cricket required some new hopes, instead Bari and co delivered the same old water torture, the same old bankruptcy of ideas.