Team Pakistan’s quest for Asia Cup 2023 has come to an end. Thursday’s Super Four match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka had taken the form of a semifinal — with India having already qualified for the final and Bangladesh out of the reckoning. And the nail-biter in Colombo ended in Sri Lanka’s victory, sending the Greenshirts packing from the tournament. However, despite being without the services of their two frontline pacers, Haris Rauf and Nasim Shah, due to injuries, Team Pakistan did well to stretch the game till the final ball while defending 252 runs in 42 overs. Batting though was a big disappointment — in other crunch games of the tournament too — and if it had not been for the late recovery by Muhammad Rizwan and Iftikhar Ahmed, the Greenshirts would not have a defendable total on the board.
What is heart-breaking for the cricket-mad Pakistani nation is that the tomorrow’s final will be played without the Babar Azam men in contention. And this despite the fact that they had started the tournament as hot favourites based primarily on a fearsome pace battery, besides dependable batters and much improved fieldsmen. The going was good till the Super Four match against India which Team Pakistan lost by a huge margin of 228 runs and which exposed quite a lot of holes in both the batting and bowling departments — poor fitness, absence of a wicket-taking spinner and lack of a genuine pinch-hitter in the front order, to name a few. Babar Azam’s captaincy also came in question.
Team Pakistan’s ouster from the Asia Cup, however, serves as a welcome wake-up call before the ICC World Cup that’s coming up in October-November. There is need to spread out the dissecting table, identify the weaknesses and come up with remedial measures. Greenshirts do have a huge potential which needs to be channelised properly. A change or two are however a must.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 16th, 2023.
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