Pakistan faces an early exit from the T20 WC after sufferring a heavy defeat by England. They need to beat Holland by 26 runs or three overs to spare.
Can they do it? Sure, but for that Younis khan will have to change his defeatist mind set and will have to change his strtategy.
1-He will have to drop one of the openers and will have to open with Kamran Akmal and will have to include Fawad Alam in the line up.
2-He will have to let Misbah bat higher.
3- He has been playing with the same set of players to give them confidence but he should now demand from the players not to play selfishly and should play out of their skin and play aggressively and justify his confidence in them by delivering.
4-He should make sure that his power hitters should make the maximum use of the first six overs which means if he loses an opener early he should send Afridi or any other power hitter early. In other words he will have to keep the batting order flexible.
5- He should be strict with his bowlers that they should not give too many extras, Rao Iftikhar should play in place of Yasir Arafat. I don’t want Tanvir to play as he is clearly out of form.
6- Afridi should lift his game up he hasn’t done anything with the bat or the ball so far.
7- The fielding standards should be raised.
8- Most important of all Younis should not make statements reflecting his defeatist mindset he has been trying to justify the possibility of a defeat before every match. Defeat should not be an option.
9- They should set a target to score 10 runs an over.
10- Other than Dirk Nannes the Dutch do not have the bowling line up to stop the Pakistani batting Pakistan can post a huge total against them if they play positively and come out of their defensive and selfish frame of mind, in order to achieve that Younis will have to play players who are confident about themselves and are clean hitters of the ball. It would not be a bad Idea if he opens with Malik and Akmal or Afridi and Akmal.
11- Pakistan can never score above 150 if we will open with Butt and Shehzad. They waste too many deliveries and completely waste the first six overs.
The fans should take it easy regardless of the outcome, in my opinion the selectors were the chief culprits they crippled the team by not selecting proper openers for this format and I think the feud between Qadir and Younis had a lot to do with it.
Qadir has resigned as the chief selector but I think Saleem Jaffer and Shoaib Mohammad should also go.
The person who has disappointed me the most is Aaqib Javed he has failed to improve the young bowlers and even the frontline bowlers have not improved under him. He needs to step down.
I don’t know what has gone wrong with Butt in the last three months it seems he has forgotten how to field and how to bat, I think Younis played him in this match because he didn’t wanted to take any risk by exposing a youngster to Dirk Nannes a first over dismissal of an opener would have put Pakistan into huge pressure. I am very disappointed in his fielding it seems he is not working hard.
Wasim; I think we should persist with Shehzad. For a 17 year old, he looks very good and has made two decent scores. This format is kind of the deep end….just look at how the young Indians came out the IPL much improved. This’ll do him good.
If we had a choice from all players then he wouldn’t be in the side because of Imran Nazir. From the squad we have here, I think it should be Akmal and Shehzad opening not Akmal and Butt.
Finally somebody was able to put some sense in YK’s Akhroat brain. Except for playing Salman Butt he did every thing most of the cricket bloggers wanted him to do.
He dropped one of the openers and made room for Fawad Alam. He dropped Yasir Arafat and played Sohail Tanvir. Malik came at # 3.
Although I wanted them to score 200+ but I think Younis and Shoaib Malik slowed down a bit in the middle to set the platform for Misbah, Afridi and Fawad.
The target of 150 was a bit too much for the Dutch as I knew that they will have hard time in facing Ajmal and Afridi.
I think Shoaib Malik and Younis Khan should bat a bit more aggressively as Fawad’s inclusion have given some depth to our batting. In super 8 stage Pakistan will face SriLanka, Ireland, and NewZealand or South Africa. From here onwards Pakistan should not care who their opponent is going to be they should only focus on their plan.
In the next stage Pakistan should keep their batting order flexible. They should have a pinch hitter in a floater position. If Kamran Akmal gets out early they should send the Pinch hitter next to take maximum advantage of the first 6-10 overs. WHO IS GOING TO BE THE PINCH HITTER? It can be Afridi or Sohail Tanvir. The middle order should make sure that they maintain the run rate, if they get one boundary/over they can certainly do it.
The openers should set the tempo and the middle order should not let the run rate to drop a lot they should try to maintain it. It’s only 20 overs game it’s important to keep wickets intact but not at the cost of runrate, it’s useless if in the end you managed to save 4 wickets but fell short of your target score by 20 runs. Maintaining the runrate is the key.
I am fine with this bowling attack although I still have concern about Sohail Tanvir he might get thrashed against good teams.
TJ
I don’t like Butt either in T20 format neither do I like Ahmed Shehzad.
Rao is a much better bowler than Arafat especially in English conditions.
I agree regarding Alam.
First up Wasim, Butt should be nowhere near a t20 squad. He should be dropped for this game and that would bring a place for Alam lower down.
I agree largely with all of your points. If Rao can, and is told to, bowl containing then I wouldn’t mind him coming in for Arafat (with Alam in for Butt, we shouldn’t then miss Arafat’s batting). We should also consider taking pace off the ball making it harder for the Dutch to score boundaries and if they do intend to, will have to use their feet. The minnows like pace onto the bat.
The line up should be flexible in any form of the game, especially in t20 but the lack of flexibility shown against Eng was astonishing.
As for the coaching and admin staff, I don’t like a single one of them.