Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Pakistan Never Wanted To Win The Hobart test

Well as expected, Australia defeated Pakistan by needless to say 231 runs in the third and final test at Hobart. This, if statistics need to be given a serious look, is the fourth time in succession that Australia has defeated Pakistan in a test series by winning all the three games that were scheduled. So, it would not be wrong to conclude that Pakistan are no match for the Aussies whatsoever. This was more so after their 36 run loss to the same in the previous test at Sydney when Pakistan let go a golden opportunity after Australia were bowled out for 127 on the first day and Pakistan took a 200+ lead there after.

Added to that, in the third test at Hobart, Pakistan went in without their wicket keeper batsmen Kamran Akmal, Younis Khan, Saeed Ajmal and Mohammed Sami who were all decent players in test cricket. And moreover, it was Mohammed Sami along with Mohammed Asif who ripped apart the Aussie batting line up when Aussies lost all their batsmen for 127 runs on board. On the other hand, someone like Sarfraz Ahmed, Mohammed Aamer who are aged 22 and 17 years respectively made it to the squad. Can anyone guess the reason for the same? MohammedAamer had until then played just 7 matches until then and it was Safraz' debut test.

Is it because that the Pakistanis had already lost the test series to Australia and a win or a loss in the Hobart test would have hardly made any difference to the Pakistanis that they went in for such a change? Or is it because Pakistan were less likely to win the test match at Hobart irrespective of whoever makes it to the squad that the playing eleven was chosen like that? The third reason for such a change that one can imagine is Pakistan had already got used to losing test matches after a they had a year without playing a single test match in 2008 and more so against Australia, wherein Pakistan had lost 3 earlier test series'.

If anyone could take pains to go through the Pakistan scorecard, only five Pakistani batsmen players were found crossing the double digit mark, with two of them being tailenders in Mohammed Asif and Umer Gul who scored 29 and 38 respectively. However, the 7 match old Mohammed Aamer could bowl 31 overs returning with figures of 2/97 that included the price wicket of Ricky Ponting but not before the Aussie captain could score yet another double hundred. So, if these things are taken into consideration, it looks like Pakistan had decided well before the Hobart test started to lose the game or may be gift the game to the Aussies.

1 comment:

Ananth said...

Looks like Pakistan is not interested in playing test cricket after spending almost a year n a half without a single test in 2008 and following that ws their T20 WC victory