Re: Pakistan vs India at Birmingham ICC Champions Trophy 4th June 2017
EB I respect your opinion. I don’t hate Misbah myself (He is after all the captain of Islamabad United!) but I principally blame him for the pathetic way we approach batting in ODIs these days. When I look around I see all other teams incl. Bangladesh batting with a flair that is glaringly missing from our top batsmen. Yes it is not all Misbah’s fault but there is not a single exciting batsman in the present team, not a single big hitter either. This pathetic timid go-slow batting style needs to be shelved for good. All we are producing is dot ball specialists (Shehzad and Hafeez the main culprits). Even BD’s batsmen were quite innovative against England the other day.
Do not want to derail this thread but when we say that Misbah did this and that with a mediocre set of players we must also not forget that he was largely up against mediocre test teams during his time barring South Africa and England & India to a certain extent. Agreed it is definitely not the same as playing at home but UAE pitches are not very dissimilar to subcontinental pitches. Even so Misbah’s record as captain outside his comfort zone (UAE) is not that good. 0-3 in South Africa, 0-3 in Australia (agreed we have traditionally struggled down under, so he’s not alone), 0-1 in NZ (Misbah missed the 2nd test), even struggled to beat Windies B team 2-1 recently. the 2-2 in England was a commendable achievement for sure. Yes Pak beat England 3-0 and Australia 2-0 in UAE but the current Australian test team also lost 0-4 in India and 0-3 in Sri Lanka. They are clueless on spinning tracks.
Yes Misbah won 26 tests but he also lost a whopping 19 as captain. Win/loss ratio is a much more relevant stat. Imran and Miandad played against much better teams, arguably the greatest team in cricket’s entire history (Windies) and the best Indian batting line-up in my book. Even so both Miandad and Imran’s W/L ratio is better than Misbah’s. Give both Imran and Miandad these same mediocre Pak players, these same average to above average opposition teams and 40 odd tests as captain in UAE and then see what they can achieve.
And under Imran’s captaincy Pakistan whitewashed Australia 3-0 at home in 1982 (Kim Hughes was the captain and that team had some of the greatest names in history, Allan Border, Rodney Marsh and Jeff Thomson)
Re: Pakistan vs India at Birmingham ICC Champions Trophy 4th June 2017
ok, i dont know what to say…dont want to sound pessimistic but dont see any reason for optimism either. this has to be one of the most screwed up and the weakest Pakistani line up ever in our entire ODI history…not even one experienced specialized power hitter in the team. All tuk tuk.
No real all rounder (imad maybe but never played in UK),
and pathetic bowling. No specialized spinner and come on guys, if we are still relying on wahab and Junaid for pace after 6 years of humiliation, it gotta be bad news for our fast bowling.
plus 70% of the team is pretty brand new. I support new talent for sure but CT or World Cup is not the place to try all new players. why didnt we try many of them in UAE over last 3 years? because senior players wanted to play to improve their averages, i reckon.
On the contrary, indian team is really balanced. good pace attack, good spin, solid batting, at least 3 specialized all-rounders and solid power hitters
At best and if a miracle happens, we can get india out on a cheap score bowling first but then, we will fail to chase as we are mentally weak against India.
Laikan of course all prayers for beloved green shirts…who knows koi moaajaza ho jayee
Re: Pakistan vs India at Birmingham ICC Champions Trophy 4th June 2017
I think hum donon taraf sey buri tarah phanste hein
We usu suck during run chases esp. in pressure games and India game is all about pressure AND
India are master run chasers. They will (likely) chase down any total that we make
However funny things can happen on the day. Pakistan’s unpredictability may yet surprise us all … Hope Amir and Sarfraz have a really good day, fingers crossed!
Re: Pakistan vs India at Birmingham ICC Champions Trophy 4th June 2017
the fact that the indian team is superior to the current pakistani team is not a coincidence. it is an institutional misbalance which is hard to overcome easily in short term.
we went down and down in last 15 years failing to produce any good fast bowlers, good all-rounders, and solid batters. our first class just deteriorated plus our school cricket system simply vanished…plus no international cricket in Pakistan for so long. long list of mediocre players since 2007 but nothing solid like inzi, younis, yusaf, akram, waqar, saqlain, saeed anwar etc nothing. just mediocre players
Indin cricket has its own challenges, corruption is there, BCCI is not super professional either but generally speaking, it is stable, cash rich with a solid school/first-class/IPL system in place. ranji is a really solid platform. so even when likes of tendulkar, dravid, ganguly, Kumble, sri-nath and lakshamn retired one after another, indian cricket did not suffer.
Re: Pakistan vs India at Birmingham ICC Champions Trophy 4th June 2017
There is so much talk in espn that there is no more attraction in india - Pak match . I am sure we have this victory and all rivalry will be back. Infact if we win 2 , 3 consecutively , India will try to avoid playing us.
Question is when we will win those 2 -3 matches… Leave what ever selection is done , lets hope we win today…
Re: Pakistan vs India at Birmingham ICC Champions Trophy 4th June 2017
Pak win the toss and chose to bowl. No faheem ashraf or ashwin. Our batting line lacking hard hitters ( shahzad , Azhar , hafeez , babar , malik ) On the other hand look at india top order Sharma , dhawan , kohli , yuvraj , dhoni…
