Tell-all book on the final mystery

“They (Pakistani player) had an absolute tunnel vision about winning the World Cup until the final. We lost the final because half the PCB turned up and disrupted our practice.

“The manager was pulling people out to talk to guests and during the match half the cricket board was in our changing room,” Pybus revealed in a book titled “Caught – The full story of cricket’s match fixing” by Simon Wilde.

The Australia-born Pybus was Pakistan’s coach during the 1999 World Cup.

Winner of 1992 World Cup, Pakistan, after some fine display in the league matches, performed miserably to lose to Australia in a one-sided final at the Lord’s.

“Mushtaq Muhammad (team’s chief coach) and myself could not even sit on the balcony. The pre-match talk and warm up were ruined. It was laughable. We lost because the atmosphere around the team changed,” he said, according to excerpts that were carried by local daily ‘The News’.

However, Pybus blamed poor performance for the team’s 62-run loss to Bangladesh in a league match during the tournament.

“I have no information if some players were got to before the Bangladesh game but I saw nothing of it. We played abjectively but we had already got through and it is easy to believe the guys were flat.

“They played poorly against not very good opponents and that’s happened through time immemorial.”

Following below-par performance in the final, in which Australia dismissed Pakistan for 132 before notching up the required runs in just 20.1 overs, the PCB constituted an inquiry Commission into allegations of match fixing during the tournament. Later, in its final report, the Commission absolved the team of all match-fixing charges.

Ironically, Pybus who has had three separate stints with the Pakistan team as trainer and coach between 1999 and 2002 was reportedly once again in PCB’s priority list in their search for a foreign coach prior to the World Cup next year.

“Pybus left for home last year after the September 11 incident at New York because of security concerns. He also had a problem of a daughter growing up in South Africa as he is a single parent,” PCB sources were quoted as saying in the daily.

With Pakistan scheduled to tour Zimbabwe and South Africa from November 1 till the end of the World Cup on March 23 next year, Pybus would be the most convenient choice as foreign coach for PCB, as he is based in South Africa, the sources were quoted as saying in The Daily.