It happened again. Another high-stakes collision with India, another catastrophic system failure for Pakistan. This wasn’t just a loss; it was a blue screen of death on a global stage. And now, the man who basically patented the "unpredictable" brand, Shahid Afridi, wants to hit the factory reset button. Hard.

Afridi isn’t just calling for a tactical tweak. He’s demanding a total purge of the current C-suite. We’re talking about axing Babar Azam, Shadab Khan, and—in a move that makes Sunday dinner incredibly awkward—his own son-in-law, Shaheen Shah Afridi. It’s the kind of scorched-earth policy you usually see from a venture capitalist who just realized the "disruptive tech" he funded is actually three guys in a basement with a spreadsheet.

The optics are grim. For years, the PCB has operated like a legacy hardware company trying to survive on brand loyalty while the actual product falls apart. They’ve got the flashy marketing, the passionate "user base," and exactly zero reliability when the heat gets turned up. After India dismantled them with the cold efficiency of a server farm, the post-mortem hasn't been a quiet affair. It’s been a public execution of reputations.

Let’s look at the "flagship" model: Babar Azam. On paper, he’s a premium device. High specs, beautiful aesthetic, great at handling basic tasks against mid-range competition. But in the big tournaments? The battery drains in minutes. He’s become the iPhone of cricket—expensive, elegant, and increasingly frustrating because he hasn't had a meaningful "update" in three seasons. Afridi’s critique isn't subtle. He sees a captain who’s lost his signal. Babar’s leadership doesn't feel like a strategy anymore; it feels like a glitch that the devs refuse to patch.

Then there’s Shadab Khan. He’s the "utility player" whose drivers have clearly become corrupted. Once the Swiss Army knife of the lineup, he now feels more like a legacy app that keeps crashing upon opening. He doesn’t turn the ball, he can’t find the strike, and his "all-rounder" status is currently a polite fiction. Afridi’s demand to drop him is a recognition of reality: you can’t keep shipping bloatware and expect the system to run fast.

The Shaheen element is where the drama gets spicy. It’s the "succession" plotline nobody asked for. Shaheen was supposed to be the hardware upgrade that changed everything—the 5G of fast bowling. But since his knee injuries, the speed is down, the swing is intermittent, and the "X-factor" feels like it’s been throttled by the provider. For Shahid Afridi to publicly call for his son-in-law's removal is a masterclass in "it’s not personal, it’s business." It’s a ruthless pivot.

The price tag for this failure is steep. We aren't just talking about lost games; we’re talking about the total devaluation of the "Pakistan Cricket" IP. Fans are tired of the "mercurial" tag. It’s a euphemism for "we don't know how to build a consistent process." Every time they lose to India, the PCB goes into a frantic rebrand. They fire the coach, change the selectors, and shuffle the deck chairs on a ship that is very clearly taking on water.

Afridi’s "axe them all" rhetoric is a classic "founder" move. He’s the guy who built the company on vibes and raw talent, looking at the modern, data-driven, yet soul-crushingly mediocre version of his old firm and saying, "Burn it down." He wants the grit back. He wants the "street-fighting" energy that defined his era. But here’s the friction: you can’t just delete the current roster and hope the next batch of code is better. There is no "v2.0" waiting in the wings. The domestic circuit is a mess of outdated infrastructure and buggy logic.

The board is stuck in a classic sunk-cost fallacy. They’ve invested millions of dollars and years of PR into making Babar and Shaheen the faces of the franchise. Admitting they’re part of the problem—not the solution—requires a level of self-awareness the PCB has never shown. It’s easier to blame "pressure" or "conditions" than it is to admit your core architecture is flawed.

So, we wait for the inevitable "restructuring." There will be meetings. There will be "tough conversations." There might even be a resignation or two that gets rescinded forty-eight hours later because nobody else wants the job. Pakistan cricket isn't a sport anymore; it's a long-running reality show about a tech startup that keeps missing its IPO.

If Afridi gets his way, the "Big Three" of Pakistan cricket will be looking for new gigs. But if the system that produced them doesn't change, aren't we just waiting for the next set of bugs to emerge?