The joke that is Pakistan Test Cricket
Just as it seemed that http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 has quit test cricket. The move came immediately after his first test as captain which ended in a humiliating 150 run defeat in what would go down as another appalling performance from a team that looks like, knows very little about test match batting.
The lack of depth in Pakistan’s batting can be gauged by the fact that an innocuous off-spinner Marcus North tore apart the middle and lower order by recording a career best six wicket haul to trigger a win when it looked like that the Pakistanis were set to give the Aussie a real run for their money on the fourth day of the match.
One wonders how amusing the Aussies would find the Pakistani team especially as they gift them one test after another through an inevitable batting collapse.
Their performance against North follows their abject surrender to medium-pacer and opening batsman Shane http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Watson-c96326 in the first innings who claimed his maiden five-wicket haul.
It just gets better when we recall that a significant chunk of the Aussie lead of 439 runs was accumulated by their tail-enders Ben Hilfenhaus, Mitchell Johnson and Doug Bollinger.
From the perspective of a Pakistani fan, the national team resembles a bunch of school boys when it comes to test cricket against the Australians, who have now won 13 test matches on the bounce which is even worse than minnows http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Bangladesh-c747’s run of losses against any other team in the longest format of the game.
Even weather refuses to help them and whether they play in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758, the outcome of a Pakistan-Australia test match has been a Pakistan loss - a run that started in Brisbane in 1999.
Over the course of the 13 defeats, the Pakistanis have not gone past the 400-run mark on even one occasion. At Lords, they were not rolled over by the likes of Johnson, Bollinger, Hilfenhaus or Smith but part timers like Watson and North.
Given the state of mind of the Pakistanis who continue to suffer from the Asperger’s syndrome (The fear of yellow) the Aussie physio Alex Kontourris would have taken a few wickets if he would have stepped on the field and roller his arm over. Meanwhile, the team manager Steven Bernard is likely to post his first and only half century in a test match if he is asked to bat at Headingley Leeds.
Experts suggest that Hilfenhaus should open the batting against Pakistan with North and Katich sharing the new ball at Headingley which will be a guaranteed success.
The Pakistani fans are simply sick and tired of Australia-Pakistan test cricket and are thinking of an intervention from the United Nations for putting an end to their misery, as they are bruised battered and tormented beyond belief.
The Pakistani batsmen won’t mind this one bit and we might see the return of the dynamic duo of Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan who have feasted on lesser oppositions. But between them, both players have managed one century in fifteen tests against the Australians.
One hopes that former test cricketers and cricket journalists don’t call for the return of the failed duo of Younis and Yousuf who failed to win even a single test against the Australians in their so called illustrious test match careers.
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