Captain aggressive Vs Captain defensive
on February 24th, 2012 at 8:29 amEngland took its revenge and thrashed Pakistan in the Odi series 4-0. I expected England to win but never expected Pakistan to surrender so meekly. Currently England are a much better Odi team, their bowling combination is perhaps the best in the world, their batting is fine and has a lot of depth but the middle order is wobbly. After watching the haplessness of their batsmen against Pakistani spinners in the test series I hoped that Pakistani bowlers will make the Odi series an even contest, but unfortunately the bowlers failed to perform.
Pakistan lost two matches by nine wickets after scoring 200+ runs four centuries were scored against them, it would be unfair to not mention the fielding lapses and the defensive field placement by Misbah Ul Haq which left the struggling bowlers luckless and helpless.
It was painful to watch Afridi not bowling wicket to wicket, he is most successful when he slides the ball in from just outside off stump but through out the series except for his first four overs he was consistently bowling half trackers and gave too much room and time to the batsman to play his shots. Ajmal for some odd reason wasn’t bowling his Doosra regularly like he did in the test series.Rahman and Hafeez were the two bowlers who bowled well for Pakistan and were quite economical.
All four Pakistani pacers looked like club bowlers during the Odi’s. A lot was expected from Wahab Riaz and Umar Gul but both failed miserably. Riaz not only had a major problem with the extras but also failed to keep his line and length right. Gul lost his ability to reverse swing and bowl those toe crushing yorkers in fact he didn’t bowl a single yorker through out the Odi series.
Before I talk about captaincy I want to talk about the selection of the team. If we look at the team combination in Odi’s, the batting was very similar to what we had in the test series, the inclusion of Afridi, Umar Akmal, Imran fahat and Malik didn’t made much of a difference as Farhat and Malik didn’t deserved to be in the team in the first place and Afridi and Akmal were as inconsistent as ever.
Apparently the tour selection committee never thought out the depth problem created by dropping Razzaq and Kamran Akmal.
Hammad Azam was suppose replace Razzaq but Misbah requested for Malik and poor Hammad never got a chance. Imran Farhat never deserved a chance in the first place especially when Hafeez was out of form, Pakistan needed an opener who could give the team a flying start, Awais Zia, Nasir jamshed, Ahmed Shahzad or Shazaib Hasan all four of them were in good form but were ignored by the selection committee for the Odi team. As a result there wasn’t an enforcer in the top order of our Odi batting lineup it consisted of only nudgers , blockers and pushers. As a result the team’s performance was flat totally devoid of any aggression.
Misbah has captained Pakistan team in 19 Odis out of which he has lost only 5 and 4 of those losses occurred in the current series. Just after losing one series the fickle minded Pakistani fans and politically-motivated ex-players are demanding him to step down as he is not aggressive enough.
Captain Aggressive ( Shahid Afridi) has led Pakistan in 34 Odis out of which he has won 18 and lost 14 and one had no result.
Captain defensive= 14:5 Captain Aggressive= 18:14
The win loss ratio above clearly suggests that Pakistan should focus on improving the team combination rather than changing the captain, its true that Misbah’s tactics are quite defensive but they have worked so far he needs to be a bit aggressive with the field placement which I am sure he will learn with every series but the aggression which the fans want to see and was missing in the series mainly comes from the individual players and not the captain, there weren’t many aggressive players in the team and those who were there didn’t had a good series because they were not in form.
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Pakistan have drawn the first blood by winning the first T20 match, finally they got the combination right, Both Awais Zia and Hammad Azam were in the team, unfortunately Hammad never got a chance to either bat or bowl but Pakistan should continue with this combination they now have the depth and variety in their batting.
The form of Afridi and Umar Akmal is a concern these two players never play according to the situation of the match but thats how they play and we shouldn’t ask them to change style, however Afridi’s bowling disgusted me as he has been consistently gifting boundaries in shape of Half trackers and wide and over pitched deliveries completely unlike him.
Wasim
Pak need 1 captain across all formats to avoid politics. They have tried many times to have different captains across different formats, but it’s hardly ever worked has it? Remind yourself of the following incidents:-
Younis & Afridi = Younis was captaining in tests & ODIs whereas Afridi was captaining the T20 side in the latter half of 2009. What happened? Younis lost control & support of the players and refused to captain again.
Butt & Afridi = we found out that Butt was deliberately planning to underperform in the one day series in England so that Afridi could be removed. These are clear signs of internal groups developing.
Misbah & Afridi = Misbah was leading exceptionally in tests, there were question marks over Afridi’s performance, conduct & captaincy skills so much to the extent that Ijaz Butt delayed announcing the World Cup captain & decided to name him officially just 2 weeks before the tournament. Surely we don’t want to see the team to be the laughing stock of world cricket again due to indecisiveness & uncertainty over how they are moving forward?
Historically great captains have captained their sides in all forms of the game for a length of time. All teams should aspire to achieve greatness. In order to stand a chance of even achieving greatness different leaders for different formats is not the way forward.
Maaz
Solid points. But I think he is inherently incapable of being aggressive hence unsuited for the shorter formats. It seems unfair to judge him after one series but trust me I am not judging him on the basis of result but only his actions on the field how he handled his bowlers how scared he was to place an attacking field.
As regards Afridi you know I am not a fan of him, i expected him to underperform in this series thats the way he is, but he wasnt the only reason due to which we lost the Odi series.
LOL : Lets get some fact straight guys.
A match fixing captain whether aggressive or defensive doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.
I would rather choose Afridi being a captain…..because I would turn my TV off 2 hours earlier and go about my work knowing that I got to watch some entertaining cricket.
You watch soccer? Which hurts more…. sudden death in penalty kicks or a game that you loose 3-0….
Lets admit cricket is alot like WWF now days..so the more analysis and more emotions that you apply here,,, you end up disappointing your self and no other.
Now with that being said my personal opinion.
Not that Afraid wont fix games in future; because in order to qualify and to be a captain for team Pakistan you should be able to fix games and underperform and raise revenue for all the stake holders.
But here is the major difference is:
I see Afridi as a forward looking captain that discourages grouping in team and actually introduce new players to come in the team and thrive. So you will get to see a lot of players that will shine as stars under his tenure. I also know his strategy ; is to loose , losse , loose and then perform well on games that really matter the most or at least pull a victory out of games we could have not possibly won …. This is strategy not only make him the BOOM BOOM (icon) He is but also increase the morale of the team mates and public like us alive.
VS Misbah :
Old Hog on his last leg that pledge allegiance to ex cricket player Mafia.. Their philosophy; brings in people like Maliks and Akmals in the team again so that you are always calling the shots and in control of the entire team and eventually the entire outcome of the game / series…. . His strategy win, win , win till your odds of loosing a game gets really low and then loose on games that matter the most. What will this do to the morale of players who take 15 wickets in a test game or score a century to get Pakistan to that wining situation .and then loose……??
.. Now what kind of match fixing captain you would have… Aggressive or Defensive.. Choice is yours.
Waseem I agree with your ODI combination argument but I am talking from a test match prospective.
Mark my words you will witness few Sydney kind of test matches where Pakistan loses a guaranteed won test match on the 5th day. I don’t know the schedule but I can totally see Mr Misbah pulling his usual stunt against India and other teams.
Misbah is unreliable player that has the ability to change the outcome of an entire game whether test , ODI;s , T20
That is why he should not be trusted and relied upon wining us any games in any format.
The guy is really Controvesial . He will make you loose on games that really matter the most. I don’t think he can be trusted in any format. We won test matches because of England’s in ability to play spin against a good spin attack there were no magic moments with misbahs captaincy. We would’ve still won those test matches without him. The fact that he pressed pcb to include Malik in odi’s tells me that he is up to something. This is to sad if affairs!!
I don’t think there was anything fishy in the test matches lets not go over board here. In the Odi’s the team selection wasn’t good enough. We should have played Hammad and Awais in the Odi’s. As regards Malik I accepted his logic, but every captain makes some decisions which do not go as planned but there were at least two matches where we lost because of his questionable field placement, he never gave his spinners proper cover. Another reason to lose Odis was Afridi’s under performance with the ball, except for his first four over in the series he became a headache for the captain as a bowler. Malik is a good T20 player, he is not full form right now but the knowledge and feel he has of this format very few players in the world have got it. I think that was the main reason Misbah got him in.
Hafeez has been a big disappointment in this series but what can you do, he is too important of a player to be dropped. But T20 and Odi’s aren’t Misbah’s cup of tea..
Just witnessed 3rd T20 and the defeat of Pakistan!! I am sure you did too….
I was skeptical of your article that’s why I did not leave any comment earlier. ?
This game brought memories of the World cup Semi Final and other games where this Defensive captain has made sure that we end up losing a game we had already won.
This SOB is a rear kind. I tell ya……He likes to drill holes in the same boat he sails and don’t abandon ship till he is certain that ship has hit the rock bottom.
His last nail on the coffin strategy may look like a huge achievement to many other there who support his captaincy but personally I would like to put a bullet up his Match fixing A** once and for all and get done over this leach.
I am sure Mr Afridi also laid a plan which would make his case stronger to return as a ODI and T20 captain.
I cannot stress the fact how all these seniors are destroying Pakistani Cricket. I hope that all these mofo are kicked out of the team soon before we lose other young players like Hamad azam and others for match fixing and corruption. Ever wondered what kind of example and standard they are setting.
Mohammad Amir is a prime example.
Sorry for all the above.. but
Every time I follow this losing team. I get nothing but disappointment.
I can’t tell how disgusted I am today with his performance, still quite perplexed how in the world we could have lost this match. No disrespect to England their bowlers bowled exceptionally well in the end, But I would still blame Misbah’s presence on the pitch for the loss.
He won’t get my vote for the limited overs captaincy from now on thats for sure.