Daily Times

Pakistan lost the fifth and final one-day international against Australia by 57 runs in Adelaide as well as the series on Thursday. The loss also brought the curtain down on a long and disappointing tour of New Zealand and Australia, on which Pakistan won just one international match out of ten. Pakistan played a two-Test series against New Zealand. The Black Caps defeated Pakistan in both Tests to clean sweep the series 2-0. New Zealand, who won the first Test in Christchurch by eight wickets, downed Pakistan by 138 runs in the second Test in Hamilton to claim their first series win over Pakistan in 31 years. The visitors’ batting suffered spectacular collapse in both Tests against the low-ranker home side. It was the same story against Australia. The visitors lost the Test series 3-0 followed by the 4-1 defeat in the ODI series. The defeat in the Test series consigned Pakistan to sixth place in ICC Test Rankings below New Zealand. And there were many reasons behind this capitulation Down Under: uninspiring leadership, lacklustre performance of senior batsmen, embarrassing display in the fielding department, and above all, impotent bowling which touched its lowest ebb in Australia.

An insatiable David Warner blasted a career-best 179 and dominated Australia’s highest ever one-day partnership with fellow centurion Travis Head to help secure their brilliant triumph. Babar Azam (100) and Sharjeel Khan (79) kept alive Pakistan’s hopes of chasing down a 370-run victory target but they collapsed for 312 in the final over. With the hosts having already taken an unassailable lead in the series, the contest was of merely academic interest but Warner’s hunger for runs was on display in the high-scoring match at the Adelaide Oval again. Warner went into the match with five centuries in his last 10 one-day innings and the diminutive left-hander brought up his sixth of the season in just 78 balls. In brief, Warner took the wind out of Pakistan’s sails.

To be a bonafide international cricketer in this day and age one needs to be able to adapt to conditions in Australia, conditions in England, conditions in the South Africa and conditions in subcontinent, wherever you play. And that adaptability is something that needs to be reviewed because some of Pakistan players are adapting and some aren’t. It is generally agreed that it is Pakistan’s batting that has let them down in recent times. Their bowling has always been seen as being among the better attacks in the world. But it is unbelievable that Pakistan failed in both departments miserably Down Under. Throughout the series, Pakistan weren’t really in the hunt since the much vaunted bowling attack was also lacking the cutting edge of the past which ensured that the team remained competitive despite largely lackadaisical batting. In brief, Pakistan were simply atrocious.

The tour Down Under highlights that Pakistan team members need to pull up their socks against better teams and improve their fielding and fitness levels. The men in green are way behind Australia and New Zealand. Quite frankly, the performances of batting coach Grant Flower, fielding coach Steve Rixon, fitness trainer Grant Luden and bowling coach Azhar Mahmood are below par. The support staff, except Mickey Arthur, have been working with the team for the last couple of years and are yet to prove their mettle since the team have mostly been struggling in batting and fielding departments as well as bowling, especially against tough rivals. One must also keep in mind that Pakistan’s schedule has also been demanding. They have been on the road almost non-stop since the tour of England last summer. Pakistan finished in England at end of August. They had seven day off, then they had the West Indies series in the UAE, then straight to New Zealand and then Australia. They have been on the road for an extremely long time and it has started to show. At the same time, one can find silver linings in the dismal tour: performance of Sharjeel and Babar. The two of them, no doubt, will be instrumental to the growth of the Pakistan side.

There are speculations that Azhar Ali is likely to be removed as Pakistan’s ODI captain after his side lost the series in Australia. And the PCB is keen to use it as an opportunity to replace Azhar with T20 captain Sarfraz Ahmed. Under Azhar’s leadership, Pakistan’s slipped to a record-low ninth in the ODI rankings. They have since risen one place to at least be in the running for direct qualification to the 2019 World Cup, but they only scraped into this year’s Champions Trophy. Much of their decline in the limited-overs formats has been building for some time, but it has become much starker under Azhar. Pakistan have won only five out of ten bilateral series under Azhar, two of them against Zimbabwe, and one each against Ireland, Sri Lanka and West Indies. In all, Pakistan won 12 and lost 18 games. However, Azhar’s individual performances have not been poor in that time – he has scored 1152 runs at 37.19.

The role of a captain in cricket is also very different from any other sport. The captain in cricket is a leader, a role model, an inspiration, a thinker, a strategist, and a tactician all rolled into one. Pakistan’s laxity in selecting their captains has also pulled the game down. Pakistan not only need a skipper with vision, charisma, and the killer instinct but also those players who could perform consistently abroad and not only in the UAE. Many Pakistan skippers, without naming anyone, in the last decade or so have all been a disservice to Pakistan cricket either because of their ineptitude or through their malice and shenanigans. Look how Virat Kohli has transformed Indian cricket and how MS Dhoni has taken it to another level.

Almost every day we hear analyses from cricket pundits in Pakistan that the standard of the game in Pakistan is going down because of the lack of international cricket in the country. This is, indeed, very far from the truth. If the international isolation alone could be held accountable, then can anyone explain how South Africa re-emerged from the same level after about 22 years of complete isolation at all levels? Pakistan have known nothing like that. It is all about the way the game is run in the country. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out what the problem is with Pakistan cricket. It’s now time for deep introspection.