Pakistan was the pioneer in the approach that a team can’t consistently perform well in ODI matches with bits-and-pieces players. Imran Khan criticized the English team in 1992 by calling it a a bits-and-pieces-players’ team. From that point on, we held on to this strategy that ODI is a game of specialists, although it helped to have immensly talented bowler like Akram, who may occassionally slog well, and to have specialist batsmen (Sohail etc) who can do their part as bowlers. But to load up their team with so-called all-rounders proved to be the undoing of England and is probably why NZ never became a really consistent team in world of cricket.
And now to think that Pakistan is falling prey to the same ill-logic!
Instead of having specialist bowlers, we decided to load up our team with so-called “all-rounders”. First lets clarify the definition of “all-rounder”.
How do you define an “all-rounder”?
Again I go back to Imran’s definition, cz I like it the best. He says that “an all-rounder is the one who can make his way into the team solely on either his batting or bowling abilities”. Can we honestly say that if Abdur Razzak is unable to bowl he will still be part of the team just as a regular specialist batsman? Or Azhar Mehmood will be in the team solely as a regular bowler? I struggle with the answer. Yeah, they are useful players, and extremely talented, no doubt, but that still leaves us with the question are we over-relying on bits-and-pieces players to win us matches? Not winning like a hero, but winning just by doing their part in their quota of 10 overs each.
As to the short tail of Pakistan, where a reasonably competent player like Azhar is coming at #9, all I gotta say is that there is a saying in West Indies that ‘if rain can’t do it, dew can’t do it either’. For our batting to succeed our 5-6 specialist batsmen have to click and score runs. They are the rain. If we are leaving it to the “dew”, and our #8 and #9 players are expected to lead the team to safety, that means our batting line-up has failed. When we are shortening our tail, we are exposing our bowling. We essentially only had Shoaib and Sami as specialist bowlers and you can’t really win matches like that.
Pakistan may win the last two ODI’s, and I hope and pray they do, but I disagree with the fundamental issue of the composition of the team and for them to only having specialist bowlers for 40% of the opposition’s quota of 50 overs. This just doesn’t seem like the best strategy.
Cricket team is essentially a simple composition, if you have good and talented players. You put in 5 specialist batsman, 1 specialist wicket-keeper and 5 specialist bowlers in your team. Then your batsmen have the primary responsibility to score runs, and you hope that some of your bowlers may score a few runs too, and your bowlers restrict the opposition, and one or two of your batsmen may bowl a few overs if a particular bowler is hit all over the ground, and you hope that wicketkeeper may also score a few runs. Imran figured it out. I hope Miandad does it too.