Imran laments Pakistan structure, blasts Board

World Cup winning captain Imran Khan has blamed "nepotism" at board level and the poor structure of domestic cricket for Pakistan's slide to No.8 in the world ODI rankings.

And he says they need to learn from Australian cricket if they want to return to their former glories.

Pakistan suffered a comprehensive 3-0 series loss to Bangladesh this week, capped off by an eight-wicket thrashing in Dhaka on Wednesday.

Quick Single: Bangladesh storm to series whitewash

The loss condemned Pakistan to No.8 in the rankings and meant they have now lost five consecutive bilateral ODI series, their last win coming against Sri Lanka in 2013.

Having not lost to the Tigers in any form of the game for 15 years, the Waqar Younis-coached side now must regroup ahead of a T20 international in Dhaka on Friday and the two-match Test series to follow.

Imran, the legendary allrounder turned politician who led Pakistan to the 1992 World Cup title, was drawn on the state of the national team during an interview with Geo News to promote his candidacy for the Tehreek-e-Insaf party in an upcoming by-election in Karachi.

He said the cricket-mad nation of 182 million people had always been able to produce talented players, but the problem lay in a failure to properly nurture their ability.

"Pakistan’s cricket will not improve as long as there are people in the cricket board who have come through nepotism and without any merit. Sadly the people in our cricket board don’t have any knowledge of cricket," the 62-year-old said.

"I never thought Pakistan would lose to Bangladesh 3-0 and drop to number eight in the ODI Rankings.

"Based on my 21-year experience of playing cricket I know that no country in the world has cricketing talent as good as Pakistan.

"I am not saying it because I belong to this country. Even players like Sir Viv Richards used to say same thing about Pakistan.

"Although we still have good bowlers in Wahab Riaz and Mohammad Irfan, we are not producing quality batsmen because there is no proper cricket structure in Pakistan.

"I have been suggesting for last 30 years to revamp the system of cricket in Pakistan.

"The best batsman of Pakistan at the moment is Misbah-ul-Haq and he was given chance at the age of 34. Mohammad Irfan was selected at the age of 30. At these ages players are normally thinking about retirements.

"It illustrates how poor the system of cricket has become in Pakistan.

"There is clearly a problem in the system which is not picking talent at the right time."

Imran, arguably the greatest cricketer Pakistan has ever produced, carried the hopes of his nation for two decades from his debut in 1971 to his World Cup swansong at the MCG in 1992.

His first-class career yielded more than 17,000 runs and almost 1300 wickets and included stints with English county sides Sussex and Worcestershire as well as a season with New South Wales in the summer of 1984-85.

He said his time playing for the Blues proved to him that the Australian domestic system was the best in the world, and was one Pakistan needed to adopt.

"We need to learn from countries like Australia who have ideal cricket structure," he said.

"I played in Australia for a season for New South Wales in the Shield and I can safely say that they have the best cricket system due to which their team is always on top and this is the reason they have won so many World Cups.

"We need to think how Australia produce so many good cricketers and Pakistan despite having talented players fail to polish their talent.

"Australia only have six teams in its domestic cricket. All players of the country feature among those six teams and due to stiff competition at domestic level they produce so many good cricketers.

"Pakistan on the other hand have 20 teams. It’s due to substandard teams in the domestic cricket that the talent in Pakistan does not get polished."

The series against Bangladesh was the start of a new era for the Pakistan ODI team following the retirement from 50-over cricket of former skipper Misbah after their quarter-final exit at the recent World Cup.

The captaincy was handed to Azhar Ali, who was not part of the World Cup squad and had had been absent from the ODI team for more than two years.

Selectors also dropped several big names from the squad, including Younis Khan, Umar Akmal and Ahmed Shehzad, while spinner Saeed Ajmal and allrounder Mohammad Hafeez returned after they had both been cleared of illegal bowling actions.

But the new side was unable to gel against the in-form Bangladeshis, who built on their quarter-final appearance at the World Cup with victories by margins of 79 runs, seven wickets and eight wickets.