Web desk: The Pakistan cricket team is going downhill day by day, and just when you think they have hit rock bottom, they will fall to a new low, and their recent ODI series defeat to a 9th-ranked West Indies team is proof of that. PCT was freshly coming into this series after their loss to Bangladesh in the 3-match T20 series.
With most of the WI’s first-choice players opting for league cricket and some of them out with injuries, Pakistan were expected to fare better against them. Still, WI gave them a hiding with a 202-run defeat in the series decider and won their first bilateral series in 34 years. As Mazhar Arshad tweeted sarcastically last night: “The last time West Indies won an ODI series vs Pakistan, none of the current Pakistan players was born…ODIs were played in white kits, Lahore to Islamabad motorway didn’t exist, Suzuki Mehran was of 1 lakh Rs and Petrol was 11 Rs/litre.”
When asked about the reason for this embarrassing defeat against a 2nd string WI team, Rizwan was his usual self. He defended his batting and captaincy, arguing that not playing 5 regular bowlers and instead going in with multiple all-rounders was a better approach than relying on genuine bowlers. But the anatomy of the fall reveals that there are bigger problems at hand that need to be addressed.
Here are a few of them:
1. Changes in the coaching staff
The rapid changes in the coaching staff are one of the biggest hindrances to the Pakistani team’s performance. Similar to our country, where a lack of consistency is prevalent in every single department, our cricket has not remained shielded from it. Bullets have left guns slower compared to the changes in our coaching staff.
Mike Hesson is the 7th person to coach PCT in the last two years, following Aqib’s brief stint, and the contentious resignations of Gillespie and Kirsten, who, in their post-resignation comments, identified something very wrong at the centre of the Pakistan Cricket Board. If we look at the top of the hierarchy, PCT had 4 different chairmen in just 2 years, from Ramiz to Najam Sethi to Zaka Ashraf to the interior minister cum PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi.
This means that it has been a bumpy ride for everyone associated with Pakistani cricket, and it is one of the primary factors behind their underperformance.
2. Constant changes in the Playing XI
The constant changes in the playing XI have shattered players’ confidence. When a player isn’t sure about his place in the team, he cannot perform to his true potential. The newcomers are under immense pressure to perform in order to solidify their place in the team; otherwise, they will be nowhere in the picture for a year or two.
At the same time, the seniors are playing for their personal milestones, as evident from the brand of cricket Babar and Rizwan have played in the past couple of years.
Most newcomers are given a series or two at best, with lofty expectations, and they are dropped even if they perform well. Case in point is Sufyan Muqeem, who has been termed “Pakistan’s future” by Rashid Latif and many other cricket experts. He had been knocking on the doors for over five years, and when he made his debut for Pakistan in T20Is, he took 21 wickets in 13 matches at an economy rate of 5.74.
In the four ODIs he played, he took 8 wickets at an economy rate of 4.91. However, he continues to be dropped from the team in favour of players like Muhammad Nawaz, who has failed to impress despite receiving numerous chances. It was time to test the duo of Abrar Ahmed and Sufyan Muqeem in this series to see how they perform together, but PCT failed to avail this opportunity.
3. Opening woes
Pakistan has struggled to have good openers in the past, but they have had some promising names in their ranks over the last few years who could stand up to the opposition and play a fearless brand of cricket.
However, Pakistan has failed to pin down the ideal opening pair among Fakhar, Imam, Saim, and Shafique. Imam and Fakhar have been one of the most prolific opening duos for Pakistan, scoring 2497 runs in 60 innings at an average of 43.05.
Imam was ranked 2nd in the ODI batting ranking, only behind Babar Azam, when he was sacked from the team in favour of Abdullah Shafique. Imam has continued to impress in the domestic circuit, both at home and away.
In his last two innings for Yorkshire in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup, he has scored 153 and 117. He has expressed his desire to perform for his country after scoring twin tons, saying in his Instagram post: “Chase too hard, and it slips away. Relax, focus, and let it come to you.”
Fakhar has missed a number of recent series due to various injuries, and when Saim Ayub took his place, he showed some glimpses of the talent he possesses. However, his foot injury before the 2025 Champions Trophy kept him out of the team for several months, and since his comeback, he has struggled to score.
Abdullah Shafique has continued to disappoint, and he may also face the axe soon. Hence, the openers who set the match up for the rest of the team are the ones putting pressure on the batting to come.
4. The dependable duo “RizBar”
It wasn’t long ago that Babar and Rizwan were called a dependable duo for Pakistan. Both of them were delivering for the team by scoring a bulk of the runs, and as a result, we were able to go deep into a couple of major tournaments, especially the T20 World Cups of 2021 and 2022.
However, since then, their performances have been under par, and this has been reflected in the consistent batting failures of our batting unit as a whole. In the recently concluded series against WI, Rizwan scored a mere 69 runs at an average of 23 and a strike rate of 64.
Babar Azam, hailed as the “King” of cricket, fared much worse, scoring 56 runs at an average of 19 and a strike rate of just 63. But this isn’t the first series where he failed. Babar last scored an ODI hundred in 2023 against Nepal. Since then, he has scored 928 runs in 29 innings at a meagre average of 37, in contrast to his career average of 54.23.
Because of this decline, he has dropped to 3rd in the batting rankings, after staying at the top for almost 4 years. It was under Babar Azam’s captaincy that Pakistan scaled the mountain in ODIs, becoming the number 1 team for the first time in history.
However, their stay at the top was brief, and they are currently ranked 5th in the world. If Babar doesn’t do justice to his talent, the Pakistan team will continue to decline, as he has been the glue holding this team together.
5. The trio of Shaheen, Naseem, and Haris
The Trio of Shaheen, Naseem, and Haris has been hailed in the cricket arenas around the world, but they haven’t delivered on their promising talents. While their performance hasn’t been up to the mark, captains continue to defend them, saying that they are still new and will improve with time.
Shaheen debuted in 2018, Naseem in 2019, and Haris in 2020; so they are not short of cricket, they just haven’t been good enough. Even if they were half the bowler Bumrah is, Pakistan would have been able to at least compete on bigger stages, but here they are losing to second and third-string teams.
On average, a fast bowler’s career lasts 15 years, and these three have already played for 5-7 years. They should be in their prime by now, destroying mighty batting line-ups, but instead, they keep getting bashed by minnows. Perhaps it is time to put them back in the domestic circuit, where they can work on their bowling, and let the likes of Khurram Shehzad, Muhammad Hasnain, Muhammad Waseem, and Akif Javed take charge.
Concluding remarks
The Pakistan cricket team is in a free fall in all three formats, with no end to their poor performances in sight. This series loss should serve as a wake-up call for management. It is time that players and management are held accountable for their poor performances.
The team needs new blood, and for that to happen, they need to let go of the dead weight holding them down. It’s time to press the reset button, because that day isn’t far off when we will be playing World Cup qualifiers like West Indies and Sri Lanka.
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