Pakistan lost the semi-final match of the ICC World Cup contest. But, the fact that in spite of the malicious campaign against our team that has gone on since its last visit to the UK, winning crucial matches against Sri-Lanka and Australia and reaching the semi-finals was a big achievement. I wish our team good luck.
Pakistanis should feel proud of their team's achievements instead of berating the team, especially because, courtesy the security situation, they could play matches only abroad which is not an economical proposition. In spite of these negatives thrust on his team, captain Shahid Afridi apologised to the nation. Excellent! Having said that, some question marks hang over the performance of the senior players - Umar Gul, Misbah-ul-Haq, Yunus Khan and Abdul Razzaq. It is hard to believe that compared to younger players viz. Wahab Riaz, Mohammad Hafeez, Umar Akmal and Asad Shafiq, the seniors performed so badly.
Surely, this performance was not what they intended. Then why couldn't Umar Gul find the right line to bowl? Why couldn't he see that he was repeatedly bowling the wrong line and length? His failures were far too many to overlook. And why was he preferred over Abdul Razzaq, who bowled only two overs?
Indeed, the ball wasn't coming up to the bat because of the pitch. But why an ace batsman like Yunus Khan couldn't play more scoring shots? The same applies to Misbah-ul-Haq; his decision to become a hitter after each ball required scoring two and a half runs, was far too late in the day. Why couldn't he do so earlier? Abdul Razzaq too, lacked the confidence that an experienced batsman like him should possess. And why the second 'power play' wasn't taken when Razzaq and Misbah were batting? Fielding too was worse than usual; dropping five catches and letting too many boundaries being scored reflected the team's loss of focus.
Clearly, this performance did not reflect the standard maintained by our team in its matches against Sri-Lanka and Australia (both played in Sri-Lanka). Then was there something serious bothering our players? Was there a threat from extremist elements in India? This needs to be investigated. If this turns out to be the case (and most likely, it will), given the propaganda in the Indian media prior to the match and the RSS threat about taking revenge on Indian Muslims if Pakistan defeated India, it will belie Indian government's gestures about rebuilding relations and jointly containing terrorism.
Comments
Comments are closed.