KARACHI:
That Pakistan cricket team is notoriously unpredictable is well known. For the last so many years, they have this label attached to them. The unpredictability of Team Pakistan, currently led by Babar Azam, was on display during the ongoing Zimbabwe. While the team had given a convincing performance right through the South African tour winning both the ODI and the T20I series, its performance against Zimbabwe has not been up to the mark. The Green Shirts lost the second T20I against Zimbabwe by a notable margin of 19 runs on Friday, failing to reach a meager target of 118. Even the first match of the T20I series that they did win, their performance was not convincing, given that Zimbabweans are a lowly rated team in the current ranking.
The loss to Zimbabwe in the second T20I must be an eye-opener for the team management, including headcoach Misbah-ul-Haq, bowling coach Waqar Younis and batting coach Younus Khan. The fact is that the whole team is depending on one or two players in the batting lineup. If they fail, the team collapses. Like in the game under discussion, skipper Babar Azam and Mohammed Rizwan – who had been making major contributions to the team’s recent victories – failed to score runs, and nobody else could lift the team with their performance. Even our much-vaunted bowling line at times look mediocre. The cricket czars in the country must focus on bringing more and more talent to the fore so as to have replacements in every department of the game ready.
Abdullah Nasir
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, April 25th, 2021.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
