Pakistan lost the Asia Cup 2022 Final which was held in Dubai and the trophy went to Sri Lanka. While we congratulate Sri Lanka on winning the tournament, lets take a moment to see where the Pakistani cricket team went wrong.
Ominous signs ahead of T20 World Cup
If you zoom out and do a macro-view, what happened in the final doesn’t look out of place. Pakistan lost 3 out of 6 matches in the entire tournament and these too could go either way.
They went Pakistan’s way solely for their individual heroic deeds. So the only game this team is clearly good at is against Hong Kong and that explains it all.
With the T20 World Cup a little over a month away, these are worrying signs. If the team couldn’t do it against Sri Lanka on a familiar Dubai wicket, God help them in Australia where the grounds are bigger and the ball jumps higher.
Babar the batsman gets a pass, Babar the captain doesn’t
The team somehow dragged themselves through to the finals despite their obvious weaknesses. After that, there were a series of gaffes and blunders, and the first one was none other than the captain himself.
As half of the Sri Lanka team returned to the dugout, Babar Azam inexplicably chose a defensive approach.
In addition, Iftikhar Ahmed bowled 3 overs for unknown reasons, even though he had never bowled in all previous matches of the tournament.
Iftikhar did not prove to be expensive and even took the wicket, but this was the time to capitalize and move towards the jugular vein, dropping Lankans under 100.
While we might not point out the Captain’s batting errors but his decisions are under close scrutiny.
Cautious early, carefree later equals recipe for disaster
The cornerstone of modern Pakistani batting is based on Babar and Mohammad Rizwan playing cautiously early on, reaching around 30 in the first five overs and trying to hold wickets for a vast majority of the team’s quota of overs.
Often they leave enough overs for later hitters to make a quick 50-60. This cautious opening and carefree approach till the end has been used only by Pakistan among the top teams, and none of them let their run rate drop even when their wickets are dropping.
The idea that offense is the best defense is an approach not practiced by Pakistani opening pitchers. In this particular game, it was Rizwan who was too slow and boring.
When it comes to getting to 171, 49 from 55 balls is no good. It only delays the inevitable. The keeper-batter performance over the past two years has been such that it almost feels wrong to write these sentences, but unless you criticize and look in the mirror, mistakes are almost always repeated in Pakistani cricket.
Shadab Khan is another one who should escape without much or any criticism except for a naughty meme or two. The leggie all-rounder was pretty decent throughout — barring the final of course.
Iftikhar, Khushdil, Asif — same player in 3 different shapes, sizes
Rizwan and Khan’s body of work forces us to exercise restraint, but Iftikhar, Khushdil Shah, Asif Ali should not be afforded such luxury. They are like cut from the same cloth.
This trio may vary in shape and size, but are actually the same players, just with different names and faces.
Neither are real hitters, and all three are on the sides solely for their six-stroke abilities. In fact, it’s more of a miss than a hit unless you’re up against with Hong Kong.
Add in all-rounders Khan and Mohammad Nawaz, and they’re both decent hitters, but not specialists. This Pakistani side’s composition made three real batsmen, followed by jacks of all trades masters of none.
Mind you, 2 of the 3 real hitters are out of shape, so it was basically Rizwan versus Asia in this tournament.
A knee-jerk reaction to this would be to drop some or all of those three and call Shoaib Malik, which is also wrong. Malik’s record in Australia is notorious, and choosing him would be to try and fix a mistake with a bigger mistake.
For team think tanks, this is clearly a difficult problem. By keeping the combination, the aforementioned trio risks harsher criticism if they fail in Australia. But history tells us that if they target Malik, it’s a guaranteed failure Down Under.
Teamwork makes the dream work
It would not be fair not to mention Sri Lanka. As Pakistani’s, you might think we are the only ones who have had a hard time with inflation, political instability, floods, dengue fever, etc. this year. Sri Lanka has also gone through just as much, if not more.
If Pakistan couldn’t be champions, there could have been no better substitute for the crown than this nation. What they lacked is star quality, that they made up for in determination, and tenacity.
Where Pakistan looked like a disjointed unit of some out-of-form batsmen, some volatile six hitters and some world-class bowlers, Sri Lanka were merely a good team and a true embodiment of “teamwork makes the dream work.”
