Battle hardened fans of Pakistan cricket would have felt a sense of déjà vu watching the semi-final against Sri Lanka as one batsman after the other came, saw and conquered nothing. Nasir Jamshed, arguably our best batsman in the team and in the tournament was wrongly adjudged leg before wicket but what followed was something that we’ve all become familiar with over the years. The art of a chase has forever eluded us; it was all too apparent in the Super Eight tie against South Africa before Gul, possibly angry at not been given the ball, vented out his frustrations and saved Pakistan’s blushes but there was to be no repeat of those heroics come semi-final day as Sri Lanka deservedly went through to the finals and have a good chance of lifting the cup.
Its not all doom and gloom though, far from it. We reached the semi-finals which is the least you would expect from your team ahead of a tournament of this magnitude. Pakistan is in fact the only team to have reached the semi-final of all four editions and that should count as some consolation. The T20 format has over the years become a popular platform for the youngsters to introduce themselves to the world and this year was no different; Nasir Jamshed and Raza Hassan have done their reputations no harm over the course of the tourney. Jamshed, as covered last week should become a mainstay in the batting lineup provided he continues to work hard on his game while the metronomical accuracy of young Raza shows that we are well stocked in the spin department at least. The selectors get critcised more often than not (and this piece will do so as well) but credit must be given where it’s due and picking the Sialkot born twirler ahead of the more experienced Abdur Rehman turned out to be a very good decision indeed.
Speaking of decisions, a fair few baffling ones were made through the course of the tournament. The omission of in-form Junaid Khan for Mohammad Sami continues to make no sense while the benching of Abdul Razzaq, our cleanest striker, beggars belief. One cannot understand the point of taking veterans like these two if you are not going to play them. If the purpose of their trip was exposure, surely we have a youngster or two who could have actually benefited from this exercise.
The most disappointing aspect though was the lack of planning and the failure to learn from mistakes. While the exact job description of Dav Whatmore is unknown, one can speculate with some degree of certainty that part of it involves making sure the above does not happen. We are not blessed with a lot of batting talent but the little we had was not utilized properly and the team management must shoulder the blame on that account. It was clear as day that our openers, especially Hafeez were struggling to make full use of the Power Play overs yet Jamshed and the senior Akmal( both players have opened) continued to bat at 3 and 4 while Razzaq, who is tailor made for this format was not used at all barring the game against Australia, which incidentally might have been his last. Umar Akmal suffered a similar fate and while this scribe is not particularly fond of the junior Akmal or the Akmal clan for that matter, it has to be said that neither was used particularly well.
The onus of team management and subsequently player utilization falls on the captain as much as on the coach and the ‘Professor’ definitely did not cover himself in glory. The most worrying aspect though is the role of Hafeez himself; he is supposedly in the team as a batsman yet has been doing much better as a bowler and is probably still in the team because he is the captain. Dropping down the order will mean admitting the aforementioned and since that is unlikely to happen we can expect some more sluggish starts in the future.
