It’s Sydney Cricket ground again, same venue where there was this big Drama that took place the last time India played Australia. In the end the Australians (with tremendous help from Steve Buckner and some unsportsmanlike behavior from the Aussie Captain) managed to beat India.
Now Pakistan have them in situation from where the Pakistanis can surely dictate the terms and delivery a series leveling blow. The question is whether they will keep the control they have or lose the plot??
We will find out today…The first session belonged to the Aussies but with a very potent bowling attack from Pakistan one would never know…
You can always bank upon Pakistan to be what no cricket fan wants them to be — hopelessly unpredictable and judgemental. The team just won the T20 World Cup and just when it looked like things were getting back to normal, the tests and ODI series loss to Sri Lanka has come to the fore. What is more disturbing is how comprehensively Pakistan was defeated in every aspect of their game. Further, the ODI loss has evoked negative reactions like match-fixing and news of supposed bookies in the Pakistan team’s hotel lobby is sure to fire-up this issue beyond control. These are self-destructive habits that have always haunted Pakistani cricket and it is about time that the PCB shed its image of being some sort of a colonial powerhouse and started acting like a sports regulatory body and took responsibility for its actions.
Sri Lanka is really having it good in the ongoing one-day series against Pakistan. They had a bit of a scare before winning the first match and now they have just wrapped up the second game, rather comfortably. What is more surprising is the ineffectiveness of Pakistan’s middle order and the fact that both Ajmal and Afridi haven’t been able to spin the ball and make their overs count for anything substantial. This combination was being looked upon as the core of Pakistan’s strategy to contain the Lankan batsmen but both the bowlers have been found guilty of pitching the ball short or make it hurry on to the batsmen, losing out on guile or any degree of appreciable spin. This has been combined with the problem of the skipper, Younis Khan, not firing and being the mainstay of Pakistan’s batting in the middle overs, it has made the team struggle even more. The decision to send-in Afridi up the order too hasn’t fired, but given his past record that cannot be surprising.
The third test match between Sri Lanka and Pakistan is underway and unless there are some serious batting heroics from the Lankan side, Pakistan should win this one comfortably and make it 2-1 for the series. In the hindsight, Pakistan might feel that they have done a mistake by not playing Kaneria earlier. For that matter, Afridi too could have been a handful on these spinning tracks. It was good to see Kaneria back in action and among the wickets. Shoaib Malik has found form after an eternity and his batting should add more strength to the middle order that has already been boosted by the return of Mohammed Yousuf. Yes, Pakistan has lost this test match series but given the circumstances under which they are playing they have more gains than losses from it. This series should gel together an almost split side and get them ready for international cricket in the coming months.
The Pakistani openers delivered and put-up a match-saving stand as the team struggled to try and save from losing the second successive test match. However, this time it was the volatile middle-order of the Pakistani team that let them down. None of the senior pros in the team including Yousuf, Younis or Misban scored anything substantial and from a secured position of about 180 runs for the loss of just a single wicket, the Pakistanis went on to lose the second test match with nearly two days to spare. It has to be said that Herath, the left-armer from Sri Lanka has really come to the fore in this match. Perhaps, the absence of Murali has led him to believe that he is the frontline spinner in the team, though Mendis too was present. Whatever might be the case, to bowl so well against decent players of spin bowling has to be applauded. The Lankans seem to be finding a lot of bowlers these days who can deliver and hold their own in the most demanding of situations, giving the team managemetn a pool of talented youngsters to choose from.
If there in one thing that will never change in international cricket, it is the performance of the Pakistani national team. You would have believed, just for a moment though, that after winning the T20 and being the toast of such a troubled nation, the team would live up to the heap of new expectations and change over. Did that happen? Hell, no. Just look at their first innings’ batting against Sri Lanka where the entire team was bowled out for 90-odd runs. This is when the team’s captain, Younis Khan, had gone on to say that they were now prepared to be the eternal tourists as a cricketing team and would try to capture one foreign territory after the another by winning matches. However, they did put up some degree of decency in terms of batting in the second innings and hopefully, they would self-demolish again. There I go again — hoping against something that is as certain as the force of gravity.
If there ever was a nation that desperately needed to see its team win a major tournament to bring some hope in a state-of-affairs that only seem to be deteriorating with every passing day, then it has to be the modern-day state of Pakistan. Nearly every bit of news emerging from this nation is typically about terrorist attacks, the counter-attack measures by the military and more body count. It should be stated that besides cricket, the nation just does not endorse any kind of sporting achievement and so it is befitting that when the nation needed the game to bring some degree of happiness into the lives of the suffering millions, the Pakistani national cricket team has delivered. I guess, now that the team has won, their captain, Younis Khan, would like to change his view of T20 not being “serious” stuff. Once again Pakistan has proved that they are the true dark horses in any tournament.
Like Nasser Hussain says, “With Pakistan, you are not sure which team you will face — the one that self-destructs or the one that destroys you.”
When Misbah played that dreaded scoop shot to get out in the finals of the inaugural edition of the World Cup 2007, many experts commented that Pakistan were just too mercurial to sustain their tempo in the knock-out kind of situations. Well, in this year’s World Cup too, the team didn’t have the most experienced of players to ensure that the squad doesn’t dither under pressure situations. To everyone’s surprise the man who has ensured that Pakistan win in the semi-final and final stages of their World Cup campaign is the perpetual under-achiever and typically impulsive — Shahid Khan Afridi.
Everyone knows how hard he can hit the ball and his bowling has made tremendous progress in the last two years but to see him actually bat till the end of an innings, although in the T20 final it was just about 12 overs, is something refreshing. Probably, someone has finally made him realize that just being good doesn’t solve any purpose unless you can contribute to the team’s cause.
There has to be something about Asian teams that makes them so good at T20. It is not just a personal opinion but the facts themselves point to this: last edition of the T20 World Cup saw India and Pakistan slug it out in the final and now it will be Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It seems that the Pakistani side has somehow managed to adapt itself to this format of the game and maybe their extremely volatile nature and the unpredictability with which they play suits the T20 format more than the ODIs or the Test matches. It would be a big heartbreak for the Pakistani fans if their team loses two consecutive World Cup finals.
Sri Lanka on the other hand look well-prepared to remain unbeaten in the Tournament and would pose many challenges for the Pakistani side, particularly against performers like Umar Gul, Afridi and Ajmal. It can be guaranteed that the Lankan team will have some sort of a plan against the 12 overs that will be bowled by these three men.
One man who could seek instantaneous redemption is Abdul Razzaq. It is hard to comment on his choice of drifting over to the ICL, but now that he is back, one good match, i.e. the final itself could be his platform to rid himself of all the ridicule that has come his way in the last couple of seasons. My Verdict? I would have to favour Sri Lanka a bit more, although Pakistan’s bowling looks much better.
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