Pakistan team’s last chance

Direct Hit

To be a Pakistani cricket fan is like having a romance one day and heart break the next day. That’s how it has been their journey in this World Cup so far. They were one of the favourites before the Asia Cup began but injury to their fast bowler Naseeem Shah, lack of form of their main spinner Shadab Khan and most importantly Babar Azam not firing with the bat has left the team at the cusp of yet another ODI World Cup exit before the semifinals.

Pakistan were on a high being the number one ODI team and were confident coming in to the Asia Cup.

They started well against India in the first game reducing them to 40-4 but completely lost their way after. They got hammered by India in the second game and were out of the Asia Cup right after their defeat from Sri Lanka in last game to not make it to the final. But what hurt them more was the injury to their premium fast bowler Naseem Shah which made him miss the World Cup.

They began the World Cup with two wins on the trot and specially the second game against Sri Lanka where they chased down a record 344 and the hopes again raised for the fans and lot of pundits predicted they would make it to the last four. But things had gone haywire after, yet another humiliating loss at the hands of their arch-rivals India at Ahmedabad.

Pakistan team has once again gone downhill. They lost to Australia conceding 370 runs and their fielding was the reason which let them down. And then worst had to come against Afghanistan. Inspite of putting up 280 batting first, their bowlers could not defend and lost by eight wickets to almost knock them out of the World Cup.

Now with four games left against South Africa, New Zealand, England and Bangladesh; Pakistan need to win all their remaining games to reach 12 points to have a chance to make it to the knockout which looks really tough as the team is very low on confidence and the body language of the players looked very poor with the shoulders down. The social media has gone after the players and trolled them specially captain Babar Azam, who is the number one ODI player in the world. They have been harsh with the captain, saying Azam is not able to match Virat Kohli’s chasing skills and not able to play in pressure games. Pakistan’s next game is against in-form South Africa again in Chennai and the fans will hope they can get back to winning ways.

In the 2019 World Cup, they won their last four games but fell short because of a poor net run-rate, that’s team Pakistan. You just can’t stop your loving them who break your heart time and again.