Pakistan lost their ninth-shortest match in the last 10 outings recently.
The tour in Australia that sees Pakistan play two Test matches against the hosts was bound to fail from the start.
Misbah-ul-Haq’s selected and trained squad lost T20I series to the Islanders in Lahore in the home series against Sri Lanka. Clearly, the former skipper could not lead the team to success.
Sarfaraz Ahmed could not make it far as captain owing to one bad performance after another in the series against Sri Lanka. Instead, Babar Azam and Azhar Ali were made captains in T20Is and the test matches.
The Pakistan Cricket Board clearly didn’t think through their decision as the results showed otherwise.
Whenever any team visits Australia, they want the best players to visit Down Under. Unfortunately, the tour became a mode of experimentation under the new team management.
Misbah might have thought there was no chance of beating the Aussies, so he sent juveniles knowing they’d become the reason for performing badly. Or he thought of the opposite: that they could gain victory.
The new management and Misbah need to realise that Pakistan’s reign at the T20I summit required hard work. Sarfaraz and former head coach Mickey Arthur had spent a lot of time preparing an invincible T20I team.
Pakistan’s downfall in the T20I rankings seems inevitable. The reasons are clear but the PCB doesn’t seem to care.
Pakistan may have learned a thing or two from these defeats against Australia in the two T20Is.
The captain has a dual role to play in leadership. Babar is performing perfectly as an individual batsman, but his role as captain is debatable. His bowling changes, his reading of the game, and his eye for identifying weaknesses in the opposing team’s plan. His skills need major polishing.
The T20 World Cup is just around the corner. Babar will have to improve his captaincy skills, and all cricket fans can do now is hope – something they’ve become experts at.
On another note, adding pacers Musa Khan and Muhammad Husnain to the team as well as batsman Khushdil Shah in the second T201 is not completely bad. Bowling to Aaron Finch and David Warner will hopefully help the pacers in the future.
Meanwhile, Shah will have to wait to take other chances to prove himself as the big-hitter Pakistan needs at the moment.
Babar and the team should learn that winning is not always possible, however, losing with grace is lauded. Team members should support each other through thick and thin – that is what makes a successful team.
As a result, despite losing the T20I series, Pakistan should learn from their lessons and hope that Babar leads the team to victory.
