Tuesday 26 November 2019AFTER losing the T-20 series against Australia, the national cricket team also lost the first test match against the mighty kangaroos by one innings and five runs with both bowlers and batsmen failing to leave any mark.
Our batsmen have always struggled at the Australian pitches but this time around our bowlers also failed to put up any impressive show. Defeat in the T-20 series and now the one in test match has raised question marks on the selection of the team. Whenever any team visits Australia, they want to be at their prime or at least they want the best players to visit Down Under. However, the tour became an experimentation spot under the new team management. After the poor performance of Sarfraz Ahmad in all the formats, he was replaced by Babar Azam in the T-20s and Azhar Ali in the Tests. The Selection Committee didn’t even blink before taking the decision and the outcome of their rushed decision are pretty clear. The fact of the matter is that over the years, the team management, whosoever was manned by it, did not do proper planning to prepare the future team or captains. The weaknesses of Babar as a Captain were very apparent in the T-20 series. Babar is performing perfectly as an individual batsman but he still has a long way to go to handle the pressure as a Captain. Similarly, Azhar Ali, failed in the first test match miserably. Pakistan totally appeared an average team against the Australians. After hockey, our performance in this most popular game in Pakistan is also dwindling fast. There is dire need to fix the problems at the grassroots level and come up with such a domestic structure that helps produce quality players. Selection should be made purely on merit whilst hunt for new players must continue. We have a lot of expectations from Chairman PCB Ehsan Mani that he will deliver and revive the old glory of the Greenshirts.
