The Cricket World Cup 2015 continues with all its uncertainties and upsets,the hallmarks of this mega event for years.The performances of associate teams such as Afghanistan, Scotland and Ireland, along with Zimbabwe, have been really exceptional as they have shown their commitment and hard work in the ground despite having little exposure in the arena, justifying their place in this tournament. On the other hand, theperformances of some test nations such as England, South Africa and Pakistan have been below par. South Africa, considered to be one of the favourites to win this tournament, proved to be very weak as their batting woes continuedagainst India too, which made them lose this match with a very huge margin. They had the problem of top order batting collapse even against Zimbabwe in the opening match while England succumbed to New Zealand in almost one sessionafter losing to Australia in their opening.
As far asthe Pak-India match is concerned,itstarted with manyexpectations from the Pakistani team as it successfully chased the two totals of around 250 in the warm up matches; the one that was against England was truly appreciable as it was against a quality bowling attack especially after when the top order batsmen failed. On the other side, India, which had been on a tour of Australia for about two months,was not even able to win a single match. So, apparently, there was no psychological edge to any of the teams and both teams entered the ground with even chances. However, this match proved to be one-sided as our batting tumbled once again to give an easy win to India,which was necessary for them to boost their confidence, eventually materialising as they then went on to defeat SouthAfrica.
After this dismal performance,everyone expected our team to fight back to clinch its first win against the WestIndies, which lost to Ireland very easily in asurprisingway in its opening match. The WestIndian side was definitely aneasier rival as this team has always been vulnerablein its performance especially when two quality all-rounders Dewayne Bravo and Pollardwere not part of thissquad. However,what we saw in this match was nothing less than a nightmare as our team miserably failed in all departments.Our bowlers were completely ineffective in containing their batsmen despite taking two early wickets, which also included Gayle’swicket, who could have been the most dangerous. Team fielding was really poor as our fielders dropped six catches,acontinuation of our poor field performance against India when we missed three chances.
The inclusion of Yasir Shah againstIndia, who isknown to be a better performeragainst the spin, and his exclusion against the West Indies, which has traditionally been weak against the spin,put many question marks about the tour management selection committee and its planning. When our batting started, we lost four wickets for just one run,a world record for worst start inthe history of world cups. Consequently,the score that was chasable proved to be huge in front of the WestIndian bowling, which conceded these many runs against Ireland in their firstmatch. Till now, Misbah has been the only performer with the bat in all matches, including the arm up ones we have played with some runs scored by Umer Akmal,a sign of concern. If we analyse the one day performance of our team in thepast three months, thesituation becomes very clear as we have hardly won any matches — afact that is not being focused on indetailed in-depth analysis being done on media as we lost to Australia and New Zealand in our home series in the UAE,despite winning the test series. How could we expect this team to presenta formidable performance in extremely different conditions when the teambowling has been weakened by the absence of many star bowlers such as Saeed Ajmal, Mohammad Hafeez and Junaid Khan? According to former Indian captain Sunil Gawasker, this is the weakest Pakistani cricket sidein world cup history.
There may have been many questions about team selection and its balance but nothing can be done about it now as we need to perform with the existing players so our batting coach and all the batsmen must now sit together to chalk out a comprehensive strategy to overcome their poor performance to give much needed support to the captain, who has single handedly become the mainstay of our batting. Even though everyone is sad after these defeats,this is not the end of the world as the tournament just got started; we still have ample time to focus on upcoming matches to overcome all these glitches, which can eclipse the team’s chances in the mega event. It is hoped that our team will now re-gather itself with new vigour to move forward from here so as to post some match winning performances in theupcoming matches to give some consolation to the nation.The South African defeat against India definitely gives us more thought to plan well in our upcoming match against it as with proper planning and moral support our team can still bounce back to qualify for the next stage as we now need to win our remaining four matches.Only one match is considered to be tough:the one against South Africa.All other matches are againsteasy rivals although our team must take them seriously as there is no room for any more complacency.
The writer is a freelance columnist