Pakistan team’s turbulent performance in 2009 coupled with a few controversies have created a lot of confusion in the minds of Pakistan cricket fans. The team has failed to win any Odi series in 2009 and they haven’t won any test match in 2009 infact the last test they won was in South Africa in Jan 2007 and the last test series they won was three years ago against West Indies. The only positive point was Pakistan’s performance in the T20′s, they won the T20 World cup and have lost only 2 T20 matches out of the 11 they have played this year.
One factor which has been common in all of Pakistan’s loses both in tests and Odi’s is the frequent batting collapses, the once coveted middle order failed on too many occassions, Yousaf was out of the Pakistan team during the first half of the year, Younis Khan and Misbah has been conisitently out of form during this whole year, the burden of batting was mainly left on the shoulders of inherently inconsistent players like Afridi, Akmal and Malik. The matches in which these players performed Pakistan won and the matches these guys failed Pakistan lost. But the coveted middle order consistently failed through out the year, the constant meddling with the opening combination also disrupted the team’s combination and affected it’s consistency but all of this was done to hide the poor performance of the middle order players and to protect them.
It took PCB selectors a year to realize that Younis Khan and Misbah were out of form and it might take them another year to realize that Malik is also not in the best of his form and is naturally incapable of sharing the burden of the middle order with Mohammad Yousaf. Over the last two years we have only groomed Umar Akmal and Fawad Alam as possible replacements in the middle order but now that they have replaced Misbah and Younis we have nobody on the bench to replace any middle order player except Faisal Iqbal who has been a complete failure both at International and domestic level.
Why there has been no attempt to fix the middle order problems is beyond anybody’s comprehension.
After the T20 WC victory and a closely contested series against Australia and SriLanka the fans were hopeful that Pakistan team might be able to regain some consistency, on it’s day the team looks as one of the best teams in the world but on it’s off day it reduces to a club level team. The match fixing rumours, the players revolt against Younis Khan and the inability of the selectors to fix Pakistan’s middle order problems in a timely fashion have delivered a mortal blow to Pakistan team’s efforts of rebuilding. On top of that Younis Khan’s poor form and his unstable personality caused much more damage to Pakistan cricket than it is percieved.
The hope of the fans have turned into despair, they are in a constant state of confusion whether to support and cheer for the team under Mohammad Yousaf or not, as the key players in this team have repeatedly let the fans down, the player’s revolt and the stories of underperformance had some substance to them but none of the culprits have been punished, this is again an area where the management screwed up once again.
Questions are being asked about the ability of Mohammad Yousaf and Kamran Akmal to handle the team. Even though Mohammad Yousaf is still the most reliable batsman in Pakistan’s team but he is not the same as he was in 2006, his strokes though are still fluent but do not have enough power in them and it seems his reflexes have become slower something which is also reflected in his fielding.
All the other criticism regarding his mellow and religious personality and lack of expression are I think a bit too over rated. The bottom line is that if Yousaf and Akmal will have to lift the majority of the burden of Pakistan’s batting if they will be able to do that they will be successful and if they failed then the results won’t be any different then they were under Younis Khan. Yousaf will have to score consistently and score big. I am not too concerned about his handling of the players and motivating youngsters, he is a senior player and one of the most respected in the team, the youngsters in the team are self motivated all they need is some performance from the seniors.
Pakistan team’s batting looks quite thin almost everybody is struggling for form right now, their chances in Newzealand will depend on the team’s combination.
Salman Butt, Imran farhat, Fawad Alam, Mohammad Yousaf, Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal, Umar Akmal, Mohammad Aamir, Abdul Rauf , Mohammad Asif and Danish Kineria
I would have replaced Shoaib Malik if there was any replacement player on the bench. So far the selectors have not decided on Younis Khan’s replacement. If the pitch is conducive for spin then Abdul Rauf should sit out and Saeed Ajmal should come in. But in my opinion Umar Gul will play instead of Abdul Rauf. It won’t be a bad Idea to play Saeed Ajmal instead of Shoaib Malik as he will score more runs than Malik and bowl a thousand times better than Malik 
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