Is Pakistan's current side the worst team to play Test cricket?
'Can’t bowl, can’t catch and can’t bat', is how former Kiwi wicket keeper, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 last year. Sadly, this is exactly how one would sum up Pakistan cricket team’s series against England where they lost 3-1.
To top it all, match-fixing allegations were leveled against pacers, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, touted as the best in the business, of bowling according to a plan. A plan that was devised by http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mazhar-c75448 Majeed the book maker, implemented by skipper Salman Butt and aided by the two Akmal brothers as well as a handful of players in the side.
The million dollar question is, is this the worst cricket team http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 has produced? It seems so because no other team has lost two matches of a series by unthinkable margins of 354 runs and an innings and 225 runs. Is it the worst cricket team in the world at the moment? By just taking a look at their record, one suggests that they might be. No batsman from the Pakistan side was able to cross the 100 run mark whereas five English batsmen - Jonathan Trott, Eoin Morgan, Matt Prior, Alistair Cook and Stuart Broad - managed to score centuries for the hosts.
Matt Prior and Jonathan Trott averaged over 50 during the four match series. Yet no Pakistani managed to average even 40. Umar Akmal, the much-hyped master blaster from Pakistan was the top scorer for Pakistan in the last match with 79 not out. His 184 runs throughout the series were the most runs scored by a Pakistani batsman. England’s, Jonathon Trott scored 184 in one innings. Such facts paint a sad picture of Pakistan’s current Test team.
Only Mohammad Yousuf, Azhar Ali, Umar Akmal and Saeed Ajmal managed to score half centuries for the visitors which proved that they lacked technique to against English bowling. Two bowlers from England, James Anderson and Graeme Swann, managed to take more than 20 wickets in the series while Pakistan’s best bowler Mohammad Amir had 19 wickets in the series.
Pakistan’s team dropped more catches than it actually took. The one player, who scored 88 on debut, and helped Pakistan avoid an embarrassing defeat, wicket keeper Zulqarnain Haider, was sent back on the first available flight because he wasn’t fit for tests. But then, he wasn’t fit when he played his heroic knock either!
If that was not enough for the Pakistani cricket team, the post match conference after the last match was more comical than tragic. Salman Butt, the captain hailed by the locals for his fluent English and mannerisms seemed out of sorts and words failed him while answering questions. The manager Yawar Saeed, who just days before the Lord‘s Test claimed that the tour was controversy free, seemed to have forgotten his hearing aid in his room. For every question, he consulted the captain and then answered as if he didn’t understand it clearly in the first place. The captain was supposed to be aided by the manager in the press conference, yet it was the manager who needed all the help he could get.
On being asked about the planned no-balls delivered by his bowlers, Yawar Saeed said that both Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif were good players and like the rest of the team gave their best during the series. A stammering Salman Butt also said that he and his team mates had ‘given our best’ when it was clear to a layman that their best could have been better.
Yawar Saeed, the manager of the Pakistan side, was confident that the upcoming T20 and One-Day International series against England would go ahead, but reports from the headquarters of the Pakistan Cricket Board suggest otherwise. Sources close to the board confirm that the 7 players suspected of fixing in Tests will not be considered in the ODIs, and if proven guilty, their careers will be finished.
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