Pakistani Cricket pundits take pride in describing Pakistan Cricket team as most dangerous and unpredictable. It is sad that Cricket experts aspiring for various coveted jobs in PCB try to cover up management and team flaws, by sweeping the glaring team mistakes under the carpet of unpredictability.
Pakistan team luckily won the tri-nation tournament against New Zealand and Bangladesh in New Zealand before start of T20 World Cup in Australia. Before going to New Zealand Pakistan lost to Sri Lanka in Asia Cup final in an unprofessional manner and later hosted England for seven T20 match series as part of T20 World Cup preparations, which England won by a margin of one match.
Without commenting much over the performance of Pakistan Cricket team in the last T20 match against England in Lahore, I was utterly surprised over the statement of Chairman PCB at the award giving ceremony of Pakistan-England T20 series in Lahore, where he said with a big smile that “how could we let England go back home without a trophy, while they visited Pakistan after 17 years.”
Cricket diplomacy aside the statement gave an impression as if we gifted the last T20 to England as a favor for their visit to Pakistan.
After an average performance with bat in Asia Cup and against England in Pakistan, Cricket experts were expecting some changes in batting line up before team’s departure to New Zealand. However, the player power prevailed and the “friends eleven” left for New Zealand without much surprise.
In the absence of established grass root cricket in education institutions, the cricket in Pakistan has grown in streets with tape ball over the years, which is quite different from professional cricket. Pakistan keeps on churning quick bowlers but its batting and fielding departments lack professionalism, power and technique.
Tape ball cricket provides you the opportunity to ball quick in the street, but it’s impossible to learn correct batting and fielding in street cricket which can’t be mastered in later stage.
I would like to draw the attention of Cricket pundits towards the fourth T20 played between Pakistan and New Zealand in Christchurch Oval on 11th October where Pakistan after winning the toss decided to bat first.
Pakistan ended scoring 130 for 7 in 20 overs. New Zealand achieved the target in 16 overs at the cost of one wicket only. Martin Guptil alone hit 6 sixes in his 62 runs innings in the match where Pakistan’s entire batting power house failed to hit a single six in the given 20 overs.
If Pakistan Cricket has to continue playing in same fashion of unpredictability, then there is no need to pay heavy purses to support staff who seems helpless in front of player power.
Elite sports played by professionals is no more a matter of chance. Most of the game aspects are now developable and controllable provided the players are physically fit, technically correct and have rehearsed the game scenarios several time before the game and has left nothing to chance.
We all understand the factor of bad luck, injury and lack of form that can affect the athlete’s performance to great extent for which a player is given adequate rest and substituted with another player till the time he regains his form, fitness and confidence.
Unfortunately, the player power in Pakistan Cricket is so strong that it supersedes all logic, coaching and selection plans. It is because of this reason that Pakistan Cricket embarks on path of unprofessionalism. Its leadership despite personal batting glory is unimaginative and hardly comes out with any out of box solution when chips are down.
Pakistan is lucky to have a strong bowling line up that mostly bails the team out from difficult situations. However, T20 is a unkind game with little or no chance of error. If Pakistan team’s batters, fielders and leadership continue to perform in same fashion, then one shouldn’t expect much from Pakistan on bouncy Australian pitches against quality bowlers supported by professional batting and fielding.
In the absence of experienced Mohammad Hafeez and fit Shoaib Malik the responsibility of batting in upper middle order rests on the shoulders of Shan Masood and Haider Ali who have to perform under pressure created due to inability of Pakistani openers to clear the fielders over their heads in first six overs. Individual performance of Pakistani openers is fantastic but they are consuming too many overs to achieve personal glory at the cost of team result.
While I post this article for TNS, Pakistan managed to chase 173 scored by Bangladesh in 19.5 overs in its sixth match. Babar Azam and Muhammad Rizwan set up the platform with their eighth century opening stand in T20 and Nawaz chipped in with quick 45 to take Pakistan to victory against an average bowling attack.
The worry remains intact about Pakistan batting first against quality bowling line of Australians, England and India on bouncy tracks and large boundaries of Australian grounds.
It would be better if Pakistani batsmen have some believe in cross training and spend some of their precious time in golf courses or baseball grounds to improve their pinch hitting and bat swing before the start of T20 World Cup, otherwise the result would be much predictable and without any surprise.
