The manner in which Pakistan succumbed to Australia in the group match at the ICC Twenty20 World Cup was indicative more of the mental hold the latter has on the team than pure cricketing skill. That the Aussies have superior — much superior — skills is not a matter of debate, but right now Pakistanis are losing it in their head even before they enter the field in an encounter involving Australia. The rather embarrassing and sustained drubbing they got Down Under earlier in the season has clearly left the Pakistanis gasping for ideas to make an impression by at least putting up a fight. Pre-contest rhetoric apart, no one in the camp believes that the unit can match the intensity of the Australians.
This apparently is the only point on which the nation is in one voice with the team and the team management. We are all waiting together for some magic wand to set things right; some messiah to appear from somewhere to cure all our ills and embolden us to take the fight to the Aussies.
This may be a strategy good enough for the man on the street for he has no control over things and is not supposed to deliver on behalf of the players. He is just a follower of the game and an honest supporter of the national team. But what about the players and the coaches who are paid to do the job? More than that, what about the captain who is not just supposed to lead from the front with his own performance, but also come up with alternative plans and imaginative ideas to handle situations as they emerge on the field of play?
Shahid Afridi is certainly not an unimaginative individual. He does have a single-track approach to his batting, which has a lopsided tendency towards brawn than brain, but as a leader of men he has earned an extra layer of respect. But when it comes to Australia, he seems to be suffering from the same defeatist approach which is shared by others in the unit.
In Australia, he had fallen to the depths of desperation that made him have a bite at the ball in order to manoeuvre some reverse swing for his bowlers. Laughable and condemnable in equal measure, it was an act of a man desperate to register a victory at the end of a barren summer. It failed.
In the latest encounter, which was the first one between the two sides after that ignominious episode, he successfully resisted the temptation to repeat that or, for that matter, any other act of lunacy for which he deserves due applause from all and sundry. Having said that, Afridi came out as a captain whose mind could not keep pace with the Aussie onslaught.
That he asked off-spinner Mohammad Hafeez to share the new ball with left-arm pacer Mohammad Amer turned out to be an unqualified disaster. More and more captains these days are introducing spin in the early overs of a T20 contest with the aim of taking the pace off the ball and to make life difficult for specialist openers. It was a sensational success when Martin Crow of New Zealand introduced it through Dipak Patel during the 1992 World Cup, but since then it was used rarely till the advent of the T20 format. Today it carries no element of surprise for batsmen have learnt to deal with it.
As it later turned out, 12 of the 18 wickets that fell to bowlers — the other two were run-outs — grabbed by fast bowlers. With two-thirds of the wickets going to the pacemen, Afridi and his support staff clearly read the track wrong. But all was not lost at the end of first Hafeez over in which he had conceded eight runs. The manner of the last-ball six would have alerted any captain to the intentions of the rival batsmen to have a go at the off-spinner. Yet Hafeez was persisted with, the result being a dismal 47 off his four overs. Surprisingly, Hafeez was the first bowler to finish his quota of overs and this happened in the first half of the Australian innings. What was the hurry?
There were several other incidents that underline confusion in Afridi's mind about managing his bowlers and field placements. His ability to lift the side also had its limitations on the day for there were drooping shoulders aplenty on the field.The Australian innings came to an amazing end when Amer bowled a maiden over in which five wickets went down — two of them being run-outs. With such an end, the momentum is always with the fielding side which helps them in the run-chase. But so demoralised were the players that even the five-wicket over failed to lift their morale.
Pakistan lost its first wicket on the first legitimate delivery of their innings and they never quite recovered from that. This is what happens when you lose the match in the head before you actually lose on the field of play. Where are you, Messiah?
