Mudassar Nazar, Pakistan's coach, has been called back from Sri Lanka for a meeting with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). He was asked to report what was going wrong with his team. A PCB spokesman explained: "A high-level meeting of the PCB did a post-mortem of the team's recent performance and showed concerns of the slump in form." The spokesman said that Mudassar, 46, will be back in Colombo before Pakistan's next fixture against Holland on September 21. But he will be relieved after the Champions Trophy, according to local reports. Richard Pybus, the South African-based coach who has already had two spells in charge of the Pakistan team, was tipped for a return.

Pakistan have lost seven out of their last 11 one-dayers, which included failures in the Morocco Cup in Tangiers and the tri-series in Kenya, where they were thrashed twice by Australia. The thumping defeat by Sri Lanka on September 12 appears to have been the last straw.

With Pakistan virtually out of the Champions Trophy (unless Holland beat Sri Lanka), Waqar Younis's job as captain too was in jeopardy. He had been given charge until the end of the Champions Trophy.

The Pakistan media also reported that Moin Khan, the wicketkeeper and former captain, was back in the reckoning to lead. Moin and Abdul Razzaq, another who has been tipped as a possible captain, were named in a list of probables for the Test series against Australia next month. Absent from that list, however, were Inzamam-ul-Haq, whose heel injury requires surgery, and Wasim Akram and Saeed Anwar. "It's disappointing that some senior players have opted out of the series," said the chairman of the PCB, Wasim Bari, "but it's their decision and we have to honour it."

Pakistan play Australia in the first Test in Colombo from October 3 to 7 and the remaining two Tests will be played in Sharjah. The shift was forced by security concerns following terrorist attacks on Western and Christian targets in Pakistan, and Mudassar believes that the need for constant travel lies at the heart of the recent poor form.

"It has affected us a lot, the younger players in particular," he said. "We don't get the breather we need and the Pakistan public is starved of seeing its heroes."

"There is a crisis," he admitted, "in the sense the team has done so well before the last three tournaments, won the majority of matches compared to the rest of the teams. But the drop has been pretty steep and has caught everyone by surprise. Once the slide started it has been very difficult to stem it."

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