Dissappointed about the lost but not too dissappointed. It was a very good comeback from Wasim and Latif in the end to put Pakistan into a decent 2nd inning total, and plus this match is alot better than what we suffered back in Nairobi and WC 99 final, but at the end we still lost.
The batting shouldn't be blamed because there is no batting lineup in the world who can chase the score of 300+ against Australia.
It all went wrong after the 20th over, Pakistan were all set for bowling out Australia for under 200 just like Brisbane, but unlike Brisbane Waqar didn't bring back Shoaib to clean the bottom order.
Australia had Symonds, who was a new batsman at that time and wasn't settled and instead of bringing Shoaib we bring in Razzaq and Afridi who btw bowled horribly, eventhough it was a batsman's pitch, they should have kept it tight like Shoaib and Wasim did earlier on.
One partnership led to another and we gave a pinch hitter like Symonds an oppotunity to score a century against Afridi and Razzaq. Yes he blasted Shoaib, Wasim, and Waqar in the end but Afridi and Razzaq gave him bad deliveries to put him into form.
I think it was a good decision of bowling first by looking at the pitch and Waqar's prediction came true in the first 15 overs when all the Aussie top order collapsed. But definatly the bad decision was not to bring back Shoaib after the 20th over and didn't let Wasim bowl his first 10 overs in a single spell, I can guarentee he could have taken 2 more wickets.
Pakistan didn't have a chance of winning from the very first bowl of the innings, and once again Afridi proved to be a failiure by playing defensive, everytime he plays defensive he ends up giving a catch to the keeper but it was a very good delivery by Gillesppi, I don't completly blame Afridi for the loss.
Both Taufeeq and Elahi looked in good form, they started out slowly but got some good shots of Gillespie and McGrath, but both of them end up throwing their wickets away from 2 stupid shots.
I don't think bringing Saeed back would strengthen the batting. And both Elahi and Taufeeq should open for the next couple matches.
Coming back to the first inning, Waqar once again made a huge mistake by not playing 6 bowlers, specially 2 spinners and that caused us an over being deducted from the 2nd inning, but Saqlain should have played definatly with the expense of Taufeeq, Pakistan were too afraid about their weak batting lineup that they forgot to play 6 bowlers.
All in all it was dissappointing to see Pakistan lose specially being hit 144 runs by a pinch hitter and give 4 wickets away to a below avg player in Harvey.
Waqar is definatly blame for this loss because of his lousy team selection and his handling of the bowlers in the first half of the 1st inning.
:biggrin: