If there was ever a moment for Pakistan to get the cricketing juices flowing, crack the whip, and address the increasingly evident shortcomings in the Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) – arguably the top-selling version of the game – it is now. Pakistan’s inadequacies in the “fast and furious” T20 cricket were badly exposed in the recent 3-0 whitewash at the hands of formidable Australia. The substandard play by Pakistan has once again reinforced the need to lift and match the standards of other better and more consistently performing cricket teams.
Call it a dicey move or a show of brinkmanship; Pakistan’s selectors gave an opportunity to some new players and rested (read “dropped”) others for the Australia tour. The strategy paid dividends in the ODI series as Pakistan took the contest 2-1 but did not pan out in the T20Is. To be fair to the selectors, most of the new players picked were top performers of the National Twenty20s.
Sahibzada Farhan had topped the batting charts in the last two editions of the National T20s, while Jahandad Khan, Usman Khan, and Sufiyan Muqeem had made a mark in the Pakistan Super League (PSL). But once again the standards of Pakistan’s domestic cricket proved way behind Australia’s.
The failure of these home-pitch performers proved our standards are well behind. The chasm between Pakistan’s domestic cricket and international cricket has been the kryptonite and our Achilles’ heel, and the talking point for quite some time now.
If there was a need to reduce this gap, then this is the time to achieve that. Both Farhan and Usman were found wanting on short-pitch deliveries. Farhan’s dismissals exposed how vulnerable he is against short-pitch bowling. Most of the Australian players were their top performers in the Big Bash League (BBL). Matthew Short was the player of the tournament in the last two editions of BBL. Xavier Bartlett was the top wicket-taker in the last edition of the Australia T20 League.
Australia’s recent crushing 3-0 victory is a “moment of reckoning” for Pakistan cricket and calls for plugging the gaping shortcomings.
Australia’s recent crushing 3-0 victory is a “moment of reckoning” for Pakistan cricket and calls for plugging the gaping shortcomings.div>
The Aussie players were adept at targeting the weaknesses of Pakistan players, mainly through their game awareness and familiarity with the local pitches. Pakistan players were also short on game awareness. The Pakistan batsmen should have found a way to counter the short bowling ploy but did not improvise with switch hits, drawing away from the short balls, and playing them over the third man spot.
Pakistan batters lacked power-hitting. With Fakhar Zaman out of favour on fitness grounds and Saim Ayub not retained for the T20Is despite his superb form in the ODI series, the top order is shorn of big-hitting prowess. Pakistan needs power hitters not only at the top but also in the middle and lower order. The fundamental challenge is all those who have the knack to hit the ball over the ropes have been tried, time and again, from Asif Ali to Iftikhar Ahmed and from Azam Khan to Khushdil Shah et. al. They all came and went without making a consistent impact.
Power-hitting and the ability to hit the ball out of the ground is an ominous lacking in Pakistan batting. Only Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have no batter in the list of 100 sixes hit in a T20I career.
Among Pakistan players, Mohammad Rizwan tops the list with 92 sixes. Under the recent flourish and frisky approach in the shortest format, teams are thriving on six hitting. India have found a new approach to six hitting. Four of their batters have got 100-plus sixes, with Rohit Sharma topping the all-time list with 203.
Suryakumar Yadav, famously known as SKY, has smashed 145 sixes in just 78 matches, an extraordinary two sixes every match, while Virat Kohli has 124 sixes and KL Rahul just one short of a century of sixes. The cavalier West Indians have four batters with over 100 sixes, namely, N Pooran 148, Chris Gayle and Evin Lewis 124 each, and Rovman Powell 113.
Another disheartening fact is that no Pakistani batter has ever hit more than seven sixes in a T20I match that Rizwan hit against South Africa in 2021. The most sixes in a T20I innings is 18 by Sahil Chauhan for Estonia against Cyprus that he hit earlier this year۔ There is a list of batters having hit 10-16 sixes in a T20I but Pakistan is missing from that list.
Teams scoring 200-plus runs have become a norm in T20Is. A new-look India team with very few from their first-choice batters beat South Africa 3-1, black and blue through a flurry of six hitting. India scored 200 plus in all but one match, piling a big 283-1 in Johannesburg with both Sanju Samson and Tilak Verma notching aggressive hundreds. That high 293-run total was India’s 40th of over 200. On the other hand, Pakistan has only put on board a 200-plus total on 11 occasions – not even half!
These facts give a wholesome idea of where we lack in T20I cricket. We do not score big and briskly. In contemporary cricket, teams are playing in a robust manner, which is the demand of the shortest format. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) will have to identify six-hitting batters. Then they have to send the best to power hitting coach, Julian Wood, in the UK to hone up their power-hitting skills.
Another novel and hitherto unused idea is to start a sixes-only tournament where batters are only allowed hitting sixes and no other runs can be taken. Pakistan is lagging well behind in what T20I cricket demands. If these weaknesses are not addressed pronto, Pakistan will become a mere also-ran in T20I cricket.
