Pakistan just barely edges past West Indies in second ODI

Pakistan won the game by two wickets but your resident pessimist wasn't too ecstatic about the outcome. These close games, though usually quite fun to watch, are quite of the indicative of the downward slide in the fortunes of our ODI team. There was nothing encouraging about how we struggled to chase 152. It's evident that cracks still remain in our ODI unit and not much is improving. For one thing, is anyone else even wondering why we're playing so many all-rounders? We played 3 yesterday. Razzak, Malik, and Hafeez...

There are some positives. So Afridi is out. Good. And we played 4 specialist bowlers. Better! But then in Yousuf's absence, we continue to play our bits an pieces players on pitches that have something to offer. Have we not learned our lessons in England and during the Champions Trophy?

Needless to say, I am not too satisfied with this strategy. It may work while we play on our soil (though these latest pitches seem a bit odd), but its definitely going to backfire on South African pitches. Do we realize who we are going to be coming up against? Ntini, Pollock, Nel and company just completed their white-wash of India. SA are going to bounce us out till we cry.

Now I'm satisfied with any 2 out of Hafeez, Shoaib Malik and Imran Farhat for the opening slot. They're decent players, but we can all safely agree, that they're not the most technically sound batsmen. Hafeez and Farhat seem to have temporarily secured their opening slot for the time being, but Malik has not been too convincing of late. He has to shoulder the responsibility of a middle order batsmen, which he is clearly not...plus he's not really performing well of late. Yasir Hameed is in the squad. Let him have a game.

Malik, however, should be in our WC plans, as he IS a good batsmen and has done well for Pakistan in the one-down position. That position for the time being though, has been occupied by our VC, Younis Khan. I think he should be left out for the next game. I understand that he was probably Mohd. Yousuf's replacement, but shouldn't one replace a middle order batsmen with someone similar?

So the point being, we played with 7 guys yesterday who can bowl and bat, when I feel we should probably have replaced one of them at least with a specialist batsmen. Faisal Iqbal, Yasir Hameed are names that come to mind.