Daily Times

Pakistan’s national cricket team is hell-bent on making history for all the wrong reasons. As if consecutive losses in the international tournaments were not humiliating enough, our Shaheens decided to suffer a harrowing 10-wicket defeat at the hands of Bangladesh on a pitch many of them probably grew up playing. Rawalpindi’s test is fast proving to have opened a distasteful can of worms with palpable tension within the team management over the performance of the fast bowlers.

Several factors, including team selection, dismal performance from Babar Azam, and the inability of Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah to deliver with the ball, decisively contributed to the embarrassing loss on Sunday. Making matters worse, the International Cricket Council found both teams guilty of slow overrate, particularly docking Pakistan’s six points on the Championship table, deducting a significant 30 per cent of its players’ match fee and most worryingly, putting a further dent in its chances to score the series.

A viral video that saw Captain Shan Masood fuming in the dressing room over a string of missed chances from his players might have earned him some sympathy points from his fans, but what exactly did he contribute towards a series poised to forge Pakistan’s identity in test cricket? Quite interestingly, as the PCB Chief Mohsin Naqvi sat before cameras, not mincing any words in grilling the entire team over coals and admitting that there were not many quality players in Pakistan’s domestic pool, to begin with, many of the former Men in Green are openly slamming him for making “mistakes after mistakes.”

Instead of promising yet another “surgery” just like one announced after an early elimination from the T20 World Cup or proving his critics right with bizarre plans involving artificial intelligence, Mr Naqvi, and the entire board for that matter, should have sat back and reconsidered the bowling order. Sending not one, not two, but four fast bowlers to bowl on a pitch known for favouring runs in the long run in hot and humid August was a grave error.

Walking out of the dressing room with a confusing strategy that did not consider a ball after the first session of day one emphasises the irony. That Pakistan cricket is sinking down with every passing day has been written on these very pages to the point of repetition, but have the players, the coaches and the administration received the wake-up call? We don’t think so. *