Pakistan V England - 4th test match at Oval

[GoldenAsif]

Re: Pakistan V England - 4th test match at Oval

@ehsan

This series has swept away many of the things which were being said about the team before the tour:

1. England will sweep 4 nil. Pak would have actually won the series if they had not squandered the advantage at edgbaston.
2. Our batting line up is weak and is not good for more than 250 outside UAE. Check the scores.
3. Our tail is weak. Tail has done reasonably well in most matches here.

Go Pak, you have made us proud.
and Salute to the best captain of Pak. - Misbah.

Agreed. I have been commenting on Dawn and Pakpassion as well and many Indian and even some Pak fans were quite dismissive of the team after defeat in the second test at Old Trafford and talking about a huge gulf between the two sides and I have been correcting them. No there isn’t any. Pakistan is by far the best Asian team in tests in English conditions and I have been saying this for a while now. We struggle in tests in Australia for sure and that needs to be addressed. This test series was always going to be about whether our inexperienced (inexperienced in English conditions, none of the other batsmen apart from Younis had played in England before) batting line-up can deliver in these conditions and to be fair, it has exceeded most people’s expectations. Apart from Old Trafford (Manchester), where Pak did not bat very well, we have competed well with England on this tour. We won here and at Lord’s, were ahead in Edgbaston and till lunch on the final day, a draw was the likely outcome. One bad session literally cost us that game. Yes it should not have happened, yes we should have handled pressure better, but day 5 batting is always a tricky affair.

On Misbah, should he retire now or tour Australia? No Pakistan captain/team has drawn let alone won a test series in Australia ever since I have been following cricket. Is the risk worth taking, I wonder? Despite their predicament in Sri Lanka, and despite the fact that this Aussie side is a pale shadow of the Australian sides that dominated cricket from 1999 to 2007, they are still very hard to beat at home (only England and SA have achieved that recently)