Postmortem: Pakistan vs West Indies - Blame the batting, not Rana

Depressing game for Pakistani fans but an exciting victory for the West Indians. Again, I wouldn't be so ticked off if Pakistan had played better. A good game means both sides go back feeling pleased at the performance. But we had the game, and threw it away. The glaring holes in our squad are really beginning to come through. I knew the warm up games over Canada and South Africa didn't mean much and seems like we changed our strategy once again. We are missing Mohammad Asif and Shoaib Akhtar like no other.

It's easy for everyone to blame Rana Naveed for the loss. But he was just a part of it, and several players were to blame. So lets not Rana bash excessively and exclusively. Lets also put our bowling aside for a moment, and talk about the selection for the moment.

Though selecting Kaneria might have seemed like a stroke of genius to some, I am not convinced that he should even be part of the squad. I made my reservations to his inclusion quite clear in the past, but have since, been resigned to the fact, that what is done, is done. He is in the squad, will probably play till Afridi is back, and that's the world cup for him. A useless selection.

Kamran Abassi touched upon the second point with regards to this squad. If any of the batsmen gets injured, who the hell will take their place? Yasir Arafat? So weak...

Now Pakistan tried something new today and they must be given credit for it. They chose 4 specialist bowlers, including a spinner, and put faith in their batsmen. It is a good strategy and a sound one. Agreed, 2 of the bowlers were pretty crappy today, but the fact of the matter is, 240 was not unreachable. The batsmen are the ones who should be the ones scoring the bloody runs. Regardless of the bowling, the pitch was still good enough for 240 and they screwed it up.

We ALREADY know our bowling is weak. Which is why we bowl first. Our batting is SUPPOSED to be our strong point. Who was truly shocked that Rana and Kaneria got whipped? Not me. However, I was surprised that the meager pressure of a mere 240 runs completely fingered Nazir, Hafeez and Younis. I can understand a good delivery bamboozling them, and some tight bowling frustrating them. But I have no sympathy for retarded shots. Which brings us to...

Batting

Imran Nazir's time is up. I have joked about the rotation policy in the past, but this dude is a fucking idiot. He is far worse than Imran Farhat, and that is pretty insulting. Someone needs to bumjack him in the dressing room, so he can get injured, so that we can complain and whine to the ICC and send for Salman Butt. We could even help him fake an injury. It's been done before and I am sure there is an SOP lying there somewhere with the manager.

I can't complain about Hafeez. He did as well as he could, but the bugger needs to calm down and take it easy. He needs to stay for 10 overs at least, get his usual 49 runs and then bloody get out. What is the point of having openers who don't even get a bit of the shine off the new ball? What is wrong with the openers? Are they all on crack? Can they only slash and swing?

Our great one-down batsmen, Younis Khan, gets the most blame. Even more than Rana actually. What in the world was he doing? Did you see that shot? What the fuck? Ahh! I was okay with him being in the squad for a while, but dude, after this world cup is over, omarlovescricket is continuing its campaign to get rid of YK from the ODI team.

Yousuf got out to a frigging good delivery. What can one do? Inzi was unlucky with the decision. I think it was going over the wicket. Fuck what Hawkeye says!

Akmal is a choot. I hope Billu.net writes something up about this. I was about to throw my coffee into the aquarium when I saw him get out first ball.

Bowling

Rana is just about as good (or bad) as anyone else who can replace him. My argument is as follows. Can Sami, or Arafat, or even Azhar do a better job than Rana? I think the only advantage is that Arafat and Azhar can bat. Replacing Rana is not going to do the trick. Rana is out of form, but his potential as a bowler is far greater than the rest of them. I think Sami is decent, but even he is very expensive. Apart from Umar Gul, our bowling is bloody toothless in this World Cup, and we must remain resigned to the fact that Rana may just be as good as any other clown on the squad. We have no other choice people!

One could pad up the batting by selecting Arafat or Azhar, but that doesn't improve the bowling at all. Plus it releases the pressure on the batting. The top 6 batsman need to know that one of them HAS to score a bloody 70 or higher. They need to know that after Akmal (arguably before), there is no one else who can bat. Having a batting lineup stretching up till Mars is not the way we will win our games. We have to develop our bowling, give our specialist bowlers a chance to get into their rhythm, and lay the responsibility of scoring runs on the top order.

This squad is pretty weak and the gaps in our strategy are becoming a lot more apparent. Don't be too surprised if we're upset in the next couple of games.

Hard fought series goes South Africa's way

South Africa won the final test match yesterday, thus wrapping up an exciting test series. Pakistan gave them a good fight till the last ball was bowled. In a series where wickets fell frequently, it was South Africa's superior batting resilience that set them ahead of their opponent.

Prince, especially, has emerged as an effective scrapper, and has blossomed into a legitimate late middle-order batsmen. His style and success in this series, probably makes Pakistan regret in hindsight, to not give Asim Kamal a game. Both Kamal and Prince batsmen are quite similar in their approach; uncomplicated, yet technically sound players, who put a price on their wicket.

As far as the big guns go, Pakistan's celebrated middle order, showed up to the party in patches, but were unable to forge big partnerships with each other. Some observations...

1) Shoaib Akhtar was sorely missed. Too much has already been said about this! Read my thoughts, Billu.net's frustration, Teeth Maestro's reservations, and Billu.net's counterpoints.

2) Mohammad Asif was overbowled. 125 overs in 3 test matches at an average of nearly 21 overs an innings is ridiculous. Compare this to the Sami, Nazir, Rana who averaged 10-12 overs per innings each. Hopefully Asif is strong enough to battle South Africa again in the ODI series. This is too much pressure on him so early on in his career. I certainly hope he doesn't suffer a physical breakdown. But as much I hate seeing him bowl so excessively, he looked like the only one who could get a wicket. Maybe Inzamam was too hasty in treating Sami and Nazir like stock bowlers. Perhaps they deserved longer spells. I had argued along similar lines before when questioning the under use of Sajid Mahmood during the Ashes. How can bowlers improve if one doesn't bowl them? We might as well have played just Asif and Kaneria as the only bowlers, and played 2 extra batsmen, as is suggested by one of my blogging colleagues.

3) Asim Kamal should have played. Yasir Hameed, his likely replacement, was useless. Asim is the sort of fellow who can play with the tail, can rotate the strike, eat up deliveries. We saw how South Africa won their games. They waited till Asif stopped bowling, and squeezed runs out of the rest of our bowlers. However they had to be patient and focussed while tackling Asif. (Incidentally, I believe Kallis vs. Asif during this series is going to go down as one of the best battles between ball and bat in recent history) Asim Kamal would have done for us what Prince did for South Africa.

4) On the whole, Pakistan proved themselves to be a bit tougher against the shorter ball, though in all honesty, the pitches weren't that bouncy. Pakistan didn't capitulate as they did against Harmisson in England last summer. They attacked constantly, especially in the first test when they were trying to set the tone for the series.

On the whole, Pakistan should regret not beating South Africa in this series. This was the closest series between these two sides in recent times, mainly because South Africa's batting is not where it used to be. It was disappointing that the batting failed us (2nd innings in the 3rd test) when we needed it the most. The level of quality between the 2 sides was close mainly due to Mohammad Asif on one hand, and Ntini on the other. Both these bowlers stood out amongst their supporting cast. Ntini , in the end, had better and more reliable partners to work with and was not as overworked.

Its never fun to lose, but Pakistan will probably be pleased that some elements in their side are coming together really well. I hate games in which Pakistan plays pathetically, and though I'm a little angry some of the strategic decisions that Pakistan made, I am impressed that we were able to challenge the Proteas. With reinforcements for the ODI series strengthening their side, they can momentarily move past the test matches and look forward to the ODI's, in which they're traditionally a lot better in.

cross-posted at Cricket Bloggers of Pakistan

Spare a thought for the Pakistani bowlers

In Shoaib's absence, it was always going to be difficult to bowl South Africa out with just 3 specialist bowlers, Mohammad Asif, Kaneria and Mohd. Sami. Pakistan usually plays the allrounder, Abdul Razzak, but since he's been injured, the team management have opted to play 4 strike bowlers and an extra batsmen in this series. This is always a bit risky, in case one of the bowlers gets injured, as in the case of Shoaib. I believe this has even happened before, last year with Shoaib as well I believe.

Anyway, what an splendid performance! A glance at the number of overs indicates the incredible amount of effort that they put in. They had to shoulder the added burden and they did so effectively. Hats off to Kaneria, Sami and Asif.

Here is the Pakistani bowling scorecard from the second innings of the second test match against South Africa. Swiped from Cricinfo...

	Bowling	O											M									R				W								Econ
	Mohammad Asif	38											16									76				5								2.00	(2nb)
	Mohammad Sami	29											5									90				1								3.10	(4nb)
	Danish Kaneria	51.2											14									105				4								2.04
	Imran Farhat	7											0									20				0								2.85
	Mohammad Hafeez	8											0									32				0								4.00