Pakistan have plenty of redeeming to do in the Boxing Day cricket Test against remorseless Australia, otherwise the home fires will keep burning. Pakistan cricket plummeted to its lowest ebb last weekend in Perth when Ricky Ponting's Australians inflicted Pakistan's heaviest Test defeat in more than 50 years and the fourth-biggest in Test cricket history.
Australia's cruising 491-run defeat before lunch on the fourth day after they were 78 for 5 touched off calamitous scenes back home with cricket fans burning effigies of skipper Inzamamul Haq and the team's English coach Bob Woolmer.
The country's cricket legend Imran Khan slammed Pakistan's humiliating loss as deplorable, while batting great Javed Miandad called for Woolmer's head.
Woolmer has been trying to instil some confidence in his bruised troops in the lead-up to Christmas, calling on his men to show more resilience after they meekly surrendered for 72 in their second innings off 31.2 overs to hand Australia a monumental win.
"I put the Australian team in the category of being a juggernaut, very difficult to stop," Woolmer said on Thursday.
"I don't particularly subscribe to the fact that they are so far ahead on the field, (Pakistan) players have equal talent to the Australians, but the structure throughout Australia is so impressive and so daunting."
Woolmer talked of bringing in a sports psychologist in the wake of the WACA slaughter, but the team want to resolve their dilemma themselves.
"Inzamam specifically was adamant that it's not outside help we need, we need to help ourselves and that was the most important thing I think that came out of our team meeting," Woolmer said.
Woolmer said while the players were shocked by the scale of the Perth disaster, he and the rest of the team still had plenty of confidence going into the grandest day on the Australian cricket calendar - a Boxing Day Test at the 80,000-capacity MCG.
"We've just got to fight a lot harder on the cricket field. The various things ... Australia on a roll, the momentum, the amount of Test matches they've played compared to ours, plug all those factors in - it probably wasn't surprising we performed as we did, in a way.
"Saying that, it was a shock because none of us expected it to happen."
The odds are that Pakistan will again go down in a big way to the Australians and lose the three-Test series, such is the gulf between the two teams.
Team coach John Buchanan, the mastermind behind Australia's modern-day cricket dynasty, said it was up to the other Test nations to catch up with the all-conquering Australians rather than Ricky Ponting's team marking time.
There is concern that Australia are proving just too good for the other Test cricket-playing nations after annihilating New Zealand and Pakistan in recent Test matches.
"Our job is not to mark time and tread water and wait for other teams to look at what we're doing and then catch us," Buchanan said this week.
"If all we did was choose to remain doing what we're doing then I think we're doing a disservice to the game and certainly a disservice to Australian cricket.
"Our job is to keep improving individually and collectively and I always believe we can."
For Pakistan to have some measure of parity with the Australians, then their batsmen must occupy the crease and score runs in partnerships.
Their bowling, led by the 'Rawalpindi Express' Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Sami, weren't the problem in Perth, but Inzamam, Yousuf Youhana and Abdul Razzaq must take more responsibility to lead the batting.
Australia have lost just three away series in the past seven years - to India (in 1997 and 2001) and Sri Lanka (1999) - and have not lost a home series since the West Indies won 2-1 in 1992-93.
Australia have retained the same 12 for the second Test with under-used paceman Brett Lee again likely to miss out on the starting eleven.
TEAMS;
AUSTRALIA: Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting (captain), Damien Martyn, Darren Lehmann, Michael Clarke, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Jason Gillespie, Michael Kasprowicz, Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee.
PAKISTAN (from): Imran Farhat, Salman Butt, Yasir Hameed, Younis Khan, Inzamam-ul-Haq (captain), Yousuf Youhana, Abdul Razzaq, Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Sami, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Khalil, Danish Kaneria.
UMPIRES: Rudi Koertzen (RSA) Jeremy Lloyds (ENG)
MATCH REFEREE: Ranjan Madugalle (SRI).
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