Asia Cup
Flickr photo by Andrew Thomas shared under a Creative Commons (BY 2.0) license.

Asia Cup 2018: Takeaways from Pakistan’s second loss

Mohammed Saqib·
One Day International (ODI)
·3 Comments·

Pakistan had the perfect opportunity to avenge their defeat to India earlier in the tournament, but the players failed to live up to expectations…

Another day, another anti-climactic and lop-sided Pakistan-India encounter. Putting aside Shahid Afridi’s heroic performance in the 2014 Asia Cup, where he finished off the game with two consecutive sixes, when was the last time this iconic rivalry lived up to all the pre-match build-up and hype? Realistically, we would have to go back to the days when MS Dhoni had flashy hair and Inzamam-ul-Haq was the captain of the Pakistan team rather than its chief selector.

Looking back at yesterday’s disappointing performance, here are my thoughts on what led to Pakistan’s demise – and what needs to change before a potential rematch in the final:

Pakistani batting no match for Rohit-Dhawan show

The ease with which Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan batted was an absolute delight to watch. Even as a heartbroken Pakistani fan, you knew you your team was being butchered by sheer brilliance. “Aik dum makhan batting,” as they say on the streets. On the other hand, Pakistan’s batsmen were simply woeful, appearing completely out of sorts and unjustifiably nervy. It was if they were seeing Yuzendra Chahal as Shane Warne and Jasprit Bumrah as the love-child of Lasith Malinga and Malcom Marshall.

The pitch was made to look like a minefield exploding with every ball the Indian bowlers delivered. If it wasn’t for Rohit and Dhawan, we would’ve forgotten we were watching cricket. To make matters worse, this happened on favourable pitches and at a time when ICC’s rules are appallingly in favour of batsmen – with bowlers having virtually nothing to work with.

Amir needs to earn his place

Mohammad Amir now has figures of 3/302 from 70 overs in the last ten matches he has played. The only swing he gets these days is the swing of the bat from batsmen when they dispatch his arrow-straight bowling to the fence. The pacer’s numbers need to live up to his reputation, if it means sitting out the next series.

The other Amir who arguably needs to go is Amir Sohail from the commentary box. As if listening to Ramiz Raja wasn’t distressing enough, the production team decided to inflict more pain on the fans by adding Amir Sohail to the mix for the Asia Cup. You’d think he would make up for his humour by doing his homework and providing valuable insight – but this might be too much to ask for given that he kept on referring to Asif Ali as Mohammad Asif throughout the game.

World Cup captaincy in doubt

The greatest cricket historian to ever live – Dr. Nauman Niaz – already prophesied three months ago that Sarfaraz Ahmed won’t make it to the World Cup next year. It seems Sarfaraz, with his tripe captaincy and dismal on-field behaviour with his players, is trying his best to make that a reality by the end of the Asia Cup. The man behind the stumps is either sulking or completely mum, and we saw both these modes in the game.

He had no slips in place with the quickies bowling and had the field set as if we were defending 337 instead of 237. The fans are still behind Sarfi – but he will eventually run out of supporters if he fails to provide the kind of results expected of this team.

Fielding atrocious once again

I was a staunch believer in numbers and statistics until I came to know that Pakistan tops the charts in terms of fielding for the past 12 months. I don’t want to be too hard on the team because they have been surprisingly good in the field recently, but in the Asia Cup they really have been awful. The team has dropped six catches in the last two matches and held on to only four.

The first drop in the match came early in the innings when Imam-ul-Haq dropped Rohit off the bowling of young Shaheen Afridi. The poor lad, having played only two ODIs for Pakistan, has already had four catches dropped off his deliveries. Perhaps the boys are trying to teach the young fast bowler an important lesson: If you want wickets, get them in true Pakistani style – like Wasim, Waqar, Imran and Shoaib – by knocking the stumps out of the ground!