CHENNAI: This time, Babar Azam had nowhere to hide. The Pakistan captain usually manages to skip post-match press conferences, especially when the team loses a match.

But on Monday, he couldn’t. He shouldn’t have, in fact, after Pakistan fell to their first-ever loss to Afghanistan in a one-day international.

To Babar’s horror, it came during the World Cup; his charges falling to a third successive defeat in the tournament, their odds of finishing in the top four narrowing with each game. There was no avoiding questions, probing ones, that needed answers.

“This loss was very hard as a team,” said Babar, his voice shaking as he spoke, no wide smiles on his face to falsely depict all is well.

It must have been hard. Afghanistan hadn’t merely scraped their way to a historic win, they quite clinically bulldozed the competition. That too against Pakistan, a side which had haunted them, dealt a number of agonising defeats that also became the subject of banter, to remind Afghanistan that they sat a rung below their neighbours in the sport, among many other things.

But the Afghans turned the tables at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on Monday night. They hurt a team which boasted being the number-one ranked side in the world hardly two months ago.

Nothing worked for Pakistan. It looked like they had batted their way to impose a big enough total for Afghanistan to chase on a historically bowling-friendly surface at the Chepauk.

But how Afghanistan openers Rehmanullah Gur­baz and Ibrahim Zadran chopped and cracked Pakistan pacers Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf and Hasan Ali for boundaries every now and then, showed that Babar and his men had no clue what was happening to them.

Mistakes caused more mistakes; this was probably what Babar meant when he tried to put into words what was actually going on with the team. “You are not able to execute — because sometimes what you want to do is not happening,” he said.

“Sometimes what you want to hit the length is not happening. And when you get a boundary in that, you try to wrap up as soon as possible, give as [few] runs as possible.

“In that you keep making mistakes back-to-back. So, there is pressure. I think because of that pressure we are not able to apply what we have learned.”

While the bowlers faltered, the fielders made it worse. The vicious cycle of pressure kept going, getting more intense with time.

The “attitude”, which Babar believed was an important characteristic for the fielders to possess, was missing.

“In fielding, whenever you do fielding, it is only with attitude,” observed the skipper, in danger of losing his once untouchable popularity. “And I don’t see any attitude from the team.

“You need to put in extra effort and be fit. You should focus on the ball, not on other thoughts and when the ball comes, as a fielder you have to be proactive, so I think we are lagging a little bit as a fielding unit.”

Only Babar would know about the “other thoughts” going on in the heads of his boys.

The thought that should be at the top of his mind, though, is how Pakistan can now make it to the semi-finals.

Coming into the World Cup, they had their eyes on the revered trophy. Now, they are left needing to win their remaining league games to have a chance of making it to the last four.

Would they be able to overcome the uphill task?

“You never know. It’s cricket. Anything can happen,” said Babar. “We will try to play our best cricket till the end. There are a lot of matches left, we will try to win all the matches. We will try to overcome our mistakes.”

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2023