A season of triumphs, tribulations, and expectations
If victory and defeat are to be considered as criteria of success and failure, 2022 and start of a new season was not one to be remembered with fondness for Pakistan
Updated Monday Jan 09 2023
If victory and defeat are to be considered as the criteria of success and failure, then for Pakistan 2022 and the start of a new season was not one to be remembered with fondness. Not only because a win or a defeat mattered most, but for the fact that there was also at stake was the World Championship of Test Cricket.
To be on top of such a prestigious contest, Pakistan’s performance was expected to be a lot better than it turned out to be in the end, losing the series not only to the visiting Australians in the three-match series by a margin of 0-1 but also facing the ignominy of a whitewash against England led by their attacking and aggressive captain Ben Stokes. And this clean sweep was the first that Pakistan suffered in a home series against a visiting team.
That Pakistan in the end managed to earn a draw against New Zealand in the two-match Test series goes much to their credit that despite weaker moments, they managed to hang on in both Tests against a much balanced and stronger side than Babar Azam’s own outfit at Karachi’s National Stadium.
To be humiliated in your own backyard in a home series is not a pleasant situation for any captain but we need to take into account the overall scenario to assess their shortcomings and their failures which now is a matter of debate. Critics with their daggers drawn now leave no opportunity to condemn the factors that influenced their poor outing, the captaincy, selection of the team, and the pitches have all now come into their ambit.
We must not however forget though that Pakistan as a nation has been in a crisis situation for a long, be it sports or otherwise. I would therefore prefer to restrict myself to sports only and to the game of cricket which I follow as do our countrymen.
Having had a nomadic existence after the 2009 terrorists attack the visiting Sri Lankan team during a Lahore Test, Pakistan had no choice but to play its home matches away from home in the UAE for over two decades and that certainly was not what we all wanted. The tragedy of not hosting teams at home for security reasons, the disappointment of fans not being able to watch cricket at home or their star players in flesh had taken the toll.
To repair such colossal damage was no easy task but with patience and planning and with security improvements we have managed to host teams and even the ones like the Australians, England, and New Zealand.
The visits of the West Indies, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh to Pakistan earlier were the beginning of the cricket revival.
Hence when criticising our performance we need to keep in focus the effect of everything that went around us. We no doubt have done abysmally against the visiting teams to not being able to win a single Test during the season from the eight matches we played from the beginning of the year to the start of 2023 but we also had positives to go with it, if we consider injuries to some of the players, including our strike bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi —down with knee and muscle injuries. If only he was available, things may have looked different than they did.
More so was the inconsistency of our batting line-up which rarely flourished or showed any muscle to take on the world-class bowlers of the Australians like Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazelwood, Pat Cummins, or for that matter their spinners Nathan Lyon and the rest.
With only a mediocre and experienced bowling attack Pakistan looked ordinary against the quality batsmen like Marnus Luabushagne, Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, David Warner, and Steve Smith.
Hasan Ali, Haris Rauf, and Zahid Mahmood were not much of a threat to the Australians.
Despite that, however, Pakistan with Babar Azam’s form and that of Mohammad Rizwan brought some respectability to Pakistan in the series. Babar’s 196 in the Karachi Test was one of the best innings I witnessed which saved the Test.
That Australia won the series, in the end, was mainly due to their consistency with bat and ball.
Against England Pakistan was completely outplayed, losing three Tests in a row to concede a clean sweep. England’s tour to Pakistan after a gap of 17 years was well awaited, which also turned out to be one of the best series that England played in Pakistan. Test cricket was given a new lease on life, when English captain Ben Stokes, a new brand of aggression, unleashed his attacking style of playing.
On a dead track in Rawalpindi, Stokes in the end set a sporting target for Pakistan to chase, something like 340 odd runs in ample time for Pakistan to win but Pakistan lost in the end by 24 runs. In the second Test in Multan, they won by 26 runs and in Karachi by an imposing margin of eight wickets.
Off-spinner Jack Leach was their top spinner taking 15 wickets in the series and their success with the bat were Henry Brook with 468 runs, Ben Duckett 357 runs with others like Ollie Pope, Zac Crawley showing similar form.
Pakistan’s raw and unknown debutant leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed showed signs of hope with 17 wickets in Tests as did Babar Azam, Saud Shakeel with the bat.
In the series against New Zealand the trend continued as Pakistan offered challenges from time to time but not that fully to gore the Kiwis. In fact the visitors were unlucky in both Tests under a new captain Tim Southee, to take the lead in the series. Every time they came nearer, they were resisted by the tenacity of Babar Azam, Saud Shakeel, Agha Salman, and of course their experienced former captain Sarfaraz Ahmed, who after a four-year forced exile by his distractors turned out to be the man of the series.
Sarfaraz was ousted from captaincy despite his fine record as captain on the personal whims of those who ran the cricket board in the times of Ehsan Mani, Ramiz Raja, and the patron of the PCB, the then-prime minister, now ousted. By self-admission in a TV interview, Khan confessed to having asked the PCB to replace the captain.
Sarfaraz suffered humiliation to be included at that time in the team and yet not played, sitting on the bench or serving drinks in the field before Najam Sethi took over as the Chairman of the PCB. The man however showed respect and dignity not to retaliate or criticise those responsible for his exit from the scene.
Shahid Afridi brought back Sarfaraz into the fold to offer a befitting reply to those responsible to throw him out. Against New Zealand in two Tests, he scored three scores of over 50 and a century, in the end, to save the Test and earn a draw in the series for Pakistan to become not only Man of the Match in the final Tests but also to earn the Man of the Series award.
A huge slap on the face of the people who threw him out.
Though we lost all three series we did have the opportunity of watching very exciting cricket and the skills of Kane Williamson, Babar Azam, and of Rehan Ahmad, the young England leg-spinner and of our own Abrar Ahmed, who was phenomenal on his debut taking 29 wickets in four Tests.
There are lessons learned and some youngsters unearthed are the positives. Win or lose we certainly have had a treat during the season of eight Tests and T20I and ODI too. The World Championship of Test cricket, not in focus though, the future I hope is not bleak as it may seem. But to get out of the vortex of failures a concerted effort will be required to walk with your head high.
The author played first-class cricket for Sindh and Hyderabad and has also captained the teams. His work has been published in several national and international publications. He has also published his autobiography "FAR MORE THAN A GAME".
