ODI whitewash

After losing four straight One-Day Internationals (ODIs) to England, the temptation may be to make wholesale changes to our team. This feeling should be resisted. Not all cricket matches are equal and on the whole, it is far better to have whitewashed the English cricket team in the Tests and lost the ODIs rather than vice versa.

A string of ODI defeats, while disappointing, doesn’t point to any structural defects in Pakistan cricket nor is it an indictment of the captaincy and coaching of Misbahul Haq and Mohsin Khan, respectively. We lost fair and square to a better team in a format that is notoriously flukey. It is time to learn a few lessons, move on and not create too much fuss about our defeat in the series.

Among the first lessons that need to be learned is that Shoaib Malik and Imran Farhat do not deserve to represent their country ever again. Our team is stuffed with first-rate spinners; having Malik, who contributes little with the bat but can always be relied on to start a mutiny or two within the team, makes little sense beyond the personal loyalty Misbah feels towards him. Similarly, Farhat, whose long, unsuccessful stints in the team have been attributed to the fact that his father-in-law is a selector, needs to be put out to pasture.

These little tweaks aside, Pakistan need to work on some basics that will make them more competitive in ODIs. There is, of course, the perennial question of our complete inability to field well. Taking catches may be a bridge too far to cross but there are other aspects of the game that need some improvement. For one, we seem to have forgotten how to pace an ODI innings, with the gradual acceleration through the innings and a surge at the end simply never materialising. Either we lose too many early wickets, or our designated hitters simply don’t get going. We posted under-par totals throughout the series, putting too much pressure on the bowlers. At the end of the day, we lost to a better team. It is time to learn our lessons and move on.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2012.