Hosts now find themselves in the familiar scenario of hoping for some outlandish results to go their way
Sidharth Monga23-Feb-20251:54
Urooj: Pakistan have let themselves down again
Pakistan sit at the bottom of the World Test Championship (WTC) table, have failed to make the final four of the last three ODI World Cups, didn’t make it out of their group in the last T20 World Cup, and now find themselves in the familiar scenario of hoping for some outlandish results to go their way to stay alive in the Champions Trophy they are hosting. Nobody is evoking any similarities with 1992. Not even as the dark or self-deprecating humour that Pakistanis tend to use to cope with such times. We are well past that stage.It is a futile exercise to wonder if this is the lowest Pakistan cricket has ever been. However, even when Pakistan have plummeted to spectacular lows in the past, they have done it in a way that justifies the cliché of their mercurial nature. This slide just feels like a terminal, slow decline. Players are not fighting with each other, there is no backdoor intrigue, there are no cliques in the team plotting to dethrone the captain, there are no comical run-outs or misfields, no defeats snatched from the clutches of victory.This just feels wrong. Bad cricket brought hope with it. That there could be a turnaround if they got their basics together or if they could pull in the same direction. That this was not their ceiling. Now it just feels like those revolting nuts and bolts have finally given in after prolonged rust.Related
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Take this defeat to India, for example. This was not down to lack of game awareness or carelessness. They won a good toss, decided to bat first on a pitch that was expected to slow down, had a solid game plan, enjoyed some luck through the injury to Mohammed Shami and generous wides, but just didn’t have the game to keep scoring five an over without taking risks. Dot balls mounted and wickets fell when they eventually tried to take risks.The bowlers stuck to good plans, managed to produce two balls that – as a consolation – will find themselves in the tournament’s highlight reel, but just didn’t have enough quality and depth to challenge India in a middling chase. It is just dispiriting that you can’t fantasise, forget visualise, about a Pakistan comeback from here.This is not a team in transition, but one that should ideally have at least five or six players at their prime. The Babar Azam-led batting has lagged a decade behind the rest of the world for far too long for it to just be an issue of intent and awareness. In today’s cricket, your game needs to keep evolving because oppositions catch up in no time. Since their last great triumph in ODI cricket in 2017, no batter can be said to have made it to the top and have kept on improving.1:31
Urooj Mumtaz: Rizwan chewed up too many dot deliveries
The pace-bowling trio of Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah and Haris Rauf presented a good core, but even they have stagnated to the extent that Mohammad Abbas was recalled for Tests late last year. Naseem has lost pace, and Afridi has been mismanaged to the extent that he was “rested” for Tests in South Africa after playing all sorts of significantly less important cricket. It is damning that Pakistan hasn’t produced a great spinner after Saeed Ajmal. Even at their worst, Pakistan’s bowling used to inspire awe. Now they produce nothing more than an occasional patch of brilliance.Even at the lowest of lows in the past, you could see there were players in the system who could turn it around. There appear to be no players right now who can do so. Or is it that such players are not identified or fully developed because of how poorly administered Pakistan cricket has been of late?During all this churn, every new board leader has come armed with a new vanity project mistaken for a magic wand. Big names have been thrown in, bigger money has been thrown at them, but it has all been an attempt at managing perception. It’s almost as though the PCB has taken over the hilarity duties from the team.Pakistan get into a huddle while trying to defend 241 against India•AFP/Getty ImagesThere is no substitute for properly organised domestic cricket played on regularly relaid and varied pitches that encourage stroke-play and bowling of all varieties. The PCB instead has focused on shiny new tournaments with fancy names and promoters. Players have come up despite the lack of system in the past too, but must we always hope to replicate what is not sustainable?It doesn’t help that Pakistan cricket has been isolated to varying degrees ever since the attack on the Sri Lanka team bus in 2009. Nor does the political turmoil in the country make things easy: the PCB has not been able to insulate itself from the country’s politics, but as cricket becomes more and more professional, getting left behind is not an option. The most practical – and painstaking – solution is to build a system that is immune to changes in government, one that protects its players from external influences, one that invests in infrastructure and matches as opposed to big names.Pakistan cricket appeals to neutrals precisely because it has repeatedly managed to overcome challenges in the past to produce cutting-edge cricket even though it might not have produced as many titles as it should have for the amount of talent and innovation it had. Now that we are seeing the consequences of a complete collapse in the administration, it is worth pausing and asking if we mistook the products of the system, however flawed, for mythical mercurial creatures.
