Hitting rock bottom

Pakistan are in grave danger of an early exit from the World Cup after losing to India and Zimbabwe

The 2022 edition of the International Cricket Council (ICC) T20 World Cup is reaching a decisive phase where teams are giving their all to secure their place in the last four.

The tournament is being already impacted by several factors including the cold weather, rain and uneven bounce as it is an early cricket season in Australia.

Despite that, a few of the usual suspects are on their way to cement their place in the next round but one team have failed to show what many would’ve predicted and that was Pakistan.

The Men-in-Green are in grave danger of an early exit from the competition after suffering back-to-back defeats against India and Zimbabwe in the first two matches.

Those results have left the Men-in-Green depending on so many other results as they now can have the maximum of six points by winning the remaining three matches.

In an article published on October 16, I wrote this in response to a question regarding which team will be the biggest disappointment:

“As hard as it may sound, I believe Pakistan will be one of the biggest failures in the mega-event. The reason is there is just too much reliance on Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan. Also, it remains to be seen whether Shaheen Shah Afridi, who has returned from a serious injury, will be able to get his rhythm right despite having little or close to little match practice.”

It is not a good thing to brag about something you wrote previously but the reality is that it was pretty easy to predict that if anyone of us would’ve taken our Pakistan cap off.

With every passing game, those words are beginning to become reality and that is something I am not at all proud of.

But the question is what made me predict it two weeks back when Pakistan won the tri-series in New Zealand, beating the home team and Bangladesh in the process, and everything looked pretty decent

The answer is the lack of trust in the think tank under whom the team are participating in this year’s World Cup.

There were just too many holes to fill in a competition as big as this and that too in conditions where we have never won a 20-over match before.

As the Pakistan team entered the competition, our strength was the top-order, something that was talked about over and over again.

The most interesting part was the management remained adamant in believing that the top two plus newly-inducted Shan Masood will be enough for them to secure a place in the last four at the very least, despite knowing that the conditions in this competition will be completely different to how it was 12 months back.

The star duo of Babar and Rizwan looked in trouble against India and especially against Zimbabwe where the side faced 25 dot balls in the first six overs.

That should never be acceptable no matter what target you are chasing. To put it into context, Zimbabwe, against the might of Pakistan’s fast bowling, played 19 dot balls, meaning they had one full over to score runs from.

Subsequently, the Green Caps ended 19 runs short of what the team from Africa managed to post in their first six overs, a gap that proved too big to overcome in the latter half of the innings.

Following the defeat, former Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik, in a show on a private TV channel, claimed that Babar Azam’s average with Rizwan is just 32 whereas without Rizwan was 56.

Following that queue, we took a look at how the Karachi Kings captain has performed as an opener with and without Rizwan in the T20Is.

The numbers suggest that it is clear that without the Multan Sultans captain, Babar is more solid but with less strike-rate but with him, his average drops significantly but with a slightly better strike-rate.

Babar, without Rizwan, scores 50 or more in nearly every other innings, something he is doing nearly once in four innings with him.

Both Babar and Rizwan are heavily criticised for their powerplay utilisation, something that was the case on Thursday as well.

In 2022, once again looking at the data, it is clear that Babar is forcing the issue, playing less number of dot balls compared to the other right-hander in the first six overs, something he would not do while playing for the Kings in the PSL where his role is to stay till the end.

By the look of it, what it shows is that either our team management forced Babar to change his game to accommodate Rizwan or he changed it himself because the role that was played by the likes of Sharjeel Khan, Fakhar Zaman, is now being played by him to ensure that Rizwan takes time and stays till the end.

One of the arguments that can be used against this whole notion is that these things are only highlighted because both Rizwan and Babar are going somewhat through a lean patch according to their high standards, but that was bound to happen, sooner than later.

Interestingly, contrary to the claim of many, both Babar and Rizwan’s opening pair has not proved to be that prolific as with them scoring 25 or more, the team’s average score is 160 this year whereas with them scoring less than 25 as a pair, the team posted 157.

Those numbers should be good enough for the management to bring someone like Zaman back to the top of the order where he has done wonders in the PSL for Lahore Qalandars but they failed to do that, hence an ideal case of using resources poorly.

Another case of using a resource badly is Haider Ali. The Peshawar Zalmi batter, who was promoted to the Platinum Category in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) for some unknown reason, was dismissed on the first ball on Thursday which was the seventh instance in the last 10 innings where he failed to score in double figures.

The player looked out of depth to participate at the highest level, just like Asif Ali looked for so long and just as Khushdil Shah looked before being benched.

The fact that our management persisted with the trio despite having in-form players back home is criminal negligence of the highest order, to say the very least.

The lack of planning from the management was once again highlighted when they forced Shaheen Shah Afridi to return early despite being half-fit. The left-arm pacer looked short of rhythm and his pace dropped significantly as well.

If that was not enough, some genius, sitting in the dressing room, thought of sending the Qalandars captain to bat when the team needed three off the final ball against Zimbabwe where a two would’ve taken the match into the one-over eliminator.

The result was that Shaheen jogged his way back to the second because of being not 100 percent fit and Pakistan ended up on the losing side by just one run.

Those errors are not something new. The same management, the same coaching staff and the same captain did that in the World Cup 12 months back, they did that again in the Asia Cup and now they are at it again in the mega-event.

It is often said that having limited resources is a problem but a bigger problem is not using them properly, as is the case with Pakistan and unless we start doing that, there is only one way for us, and that is back home after an early exit from the competition.