Whitewash at home
Team Pakistan has had the bitter taste of whitewash in Tests earlier also – in fact, on eight occasions. Six times, it were Australia who inflicted the 3-0 humiliation on us, and twice it were South Africa. However, this is the first time in 70 years since Pakistan got the Test status that our boys have been whitewashed at home. And the “credit” goes to the Babar Azam Men. Winning the Rawalpindi and Multan Tests by 74 and 26 runs respectively, England – on their first tour of Pakistan since 2005 – won the Karachi game too, convincingly by 8 wickets. Such was the plight of the home team that two of the matches could not even go beyond day four. Only the Rawalpindi game stretched into the final day, thanks to the dead wicket that runs the risk of being suspended from hosting any more international cricket for being twice declared “below average” by the ICC.
Even though both batting and bowling are equally responsible for Pakistan’s historic drubbing, the latter can still get away with the fact that it was devoid of its front-liners: Shaheen Shah Afridi had been ruled out of the series even before the rubber started, Haris Rauf hurt himself the first Test and Naseem Shah failed to recover from a shoulder injury sustained before the second Test. So basically it’s the long known weakness of our batsmen to negotiate seam and swing that comes up as the main culprit.
Questions are being raised on Babar Azam’s captaincy too – something that typically happens in such cases – even though we don’t see anybody good enough to take over the reins from him. It’s simply because a captain should be an automatic selection for the playing eleven, and none other than Babar currently can stake a permanent place in the lineup. Time to come to the dissection table and look for the flaws in minute details.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 21st, 2022.
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