Another home defeat

Home matches have too many advantages for the hosts, like partisan fans, favourable weather conditions and discretion to prepare pitch. For these reasons, a loss at home hardly leaves room for any justifications. Unfortunately, Team Pakistan is not just losing at home, but losing very badly. The Babar Azam Eleven was first handed a whitewash in the three-Test rubber by England in Dec 2022, and now they have gone down 2-1 in the ODI series against New Zealand. In between, the Green Shirts barely managed a 0-0 draw in the two-Test rubber against the Kiwis.

That New Zealand’s ODI win is their first ODI series victory in Pakistan in their six attempts speaks of the historic decline in Team Pakistan’s performance at home. Green Shirts did start off on a positive note, winning the first one-dayer quite comfortably by six wickets. But they lost the second game as comfortably as they had won the first one — by 79 runs. There was a bit of fight in the decider until Glenn Phillips took the crease five down and tilted what by then had been an evenly-poised game — at 181-5 in the 36^th over in pursuit of 281 — in New Zealand’s favour. Phillips hit a quickfire 63 off 42 studded with four boundaries and four maximums to clinch victory for the visitors with 2 wickets and 11 balls to spare.

New men in the cricket board, Chairman Najam Sethi in particular, have their task cut out. They need to dissect the performance of all old and new players and carve out a formidable unit keeping in view the ICC World Cup that is scheduled in October 2023. Their main job, however, is to bolster the batting line with players who could meet the modern requirements of the game, as most of our players, including skipper Babar Azam, are too addicted to shirk the old defensive style of batting. A couple of good all-rounders need to be hunted too.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2023.

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