Pakistan’s ex-cricket board chairman, Ramiz Raja criticizes the management of the team for their recent 2-0 loss to England before T20 World Cup.
England dominated Pakistan in every aspect of the game at Kennington Oval in the 4th T20I, chasing down a target of 158 with over four overs to spare.
The Pakistan batting had no oomph through its middle and pace bowling lacked any sort of magic as they went about defending a target.
Ramiz expressed his worries about the experimentation within Pakistan’s white-ball setup. He again chided the management for having experimented with disastrous consequences.
“They should stop experimenting with team. Go into a game with a proper combination. You need to get out of the phobia of strike rate because you don’t have that kind of players. Aapne is team ka satyanash kar diya hai (You have completely made a cock-up of this team),” said Ramiz on his YouTube channel.
Ramiz has publicly spoken about changing Saim Ayub to an opener. This move also dismantled Babar Azam’s and Mohammad Rizwan’s highly effective partnership which was put together during Mohammad Hafeez’s short tenure as Director Cricket Operations for Pakistan.
Since Ayub became an opener, he has been quite disappointing. Additionally, Pakistan’s middler order batsmen have found it difficult to score runs at crucial moments in matches thus adding more problems to their unit’s batting failures during that period.
“You have ruined the team by breaking up opening pair (of Babar and Rizwan). The role of middle order is not defined. You have put all-rounders in the middle and two wicket keepers are playing. You are changing fast bowlers. Your spinners do not turn the ball and do not hold confidence. You put Imad Wasim out of the playing XI. There is no sideways movement and you have completely dismantled the team just before the T20 World Cup,” he added.
Initially, in the recent T20I series against New Zealand, Ayub struggled a lot to find his feet. He however showed promising improvement by scoring 45 runs off 29 balls in the first match. Across four matches against Blackcaps, the 21-year-old tallied only 52 runs at an average of 14.25. His best score during this period was only 32 in that series.
Until Ayub came into picture, Babar and Rizwan formed one of Pakistan’s best opening partnerships with them being tried as sundries hitters too. In addition they both had great cricketing moments together when they played at last Men’s T20 World Cup in 2022 where they shared a record breaking stand of 105 runs. This marked their third century partnership in the tournament which emphasized how well they comprehend each other while doing batting.
In Group A for the upcoming tournament are Pakistan alongside arch-rival India as well as Canada, USA and Ireland among others. They will begin with co-hosts USA on Thursday at Grand Prairie Stadium, Texas.
