Re: Shoaib Malik’s resurgence
Ah, our dear Imran is in the picture, once again.
From my point of view, this is the problem in our batting order, with Shoaib Malik being the star performer in #3 position. As mentioned several times in the past, almost all big guns and top-quality batters of any team, bat in the top four positions. They are the main backbone of the team, they are the players who have the capability to drop anchor in almost any situation. With Inzamam thrusting Malik up the order before himself, Yousuf and Younis, this strategy has severely backfired, and all of the "supposed" main 'cream-of-the-crop' batsmen of our team have failed to make a sizeable and decent contribution in this series (save the last encounter, where the likes of Sami tarnished that image as well). Malik is a genuine hitter of the cricket ball, whileas the likes of Inzamam, Yousuf and Younis are needed to tick the scoreboard over and rotate the strike, which is especially needed in the middle overs. One cannot refuse to look past this lynchpin and mainstay, when we have three of the top batsmen in the team, all refusing to come up the order to save a sinking ship when the situation requires it.
Even though, as widely known, Inzamam's 'age-old' antics will never allow him to bravely implement this strategy and even though he will consistently send Malik up the order before the big guns, the flogging massacre in this series should serve as a wake-up call and realization should be made that even though we have a tendency to brush the defeats under the carpet and we consistently like to remind ourselves of the past victories and whatnot, it is of absolute necessity that such empty discharge of flow heavily needs to be magnified under a microscope. Only then, we can further isolate the problems and help solve this unreasonable set of sequences of issues that we have created upon ourselves, for no given and apparent reason.