Right after Pakistan’s defeat against Sri Lanka in Asia Cup 2022, the team faces tons of criticism after they fail to strengthen their middle order.
Ramiz Raja on Pakistan’s Middle Order Failure
Though Pakistan’s opening batters Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan lays a strong foundation for the team, the middle-order players fail to carry on the impact and end up scoring fewer runs than expected.
When Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Ramiz Raja was asked about the same, he had quite a unique take on the matter.
“We did it in the last T20 World Cup (selecting Shoaib Malik). I don’t have any problem in doing it again. My philosophy is simple, you should have consistency in selection. You need a strong captain as well. We don’t have Lionel Messi sitting on our bench and it is not like we have selected really bad players. We have limited options,” Ramiz said on the Pakistani channel.
Though Pakistan openers hold two positions in the top three rankings of the ICC T20 Men’s Ranking, the team fails to shine. Pakistan who is currently in New Zealand to play the New Zealand T20I Tri-series fails to win the Asia Cup 2022 final.
Apart from that Pakistan also failed to win the home T20I series against England where they ended up losing the series by 3-4.
“To increase options and talent pool, we are working on our junior leagues, at this point of time, it’s a bit of hit and miss but my philosophy is to make the captain strong. You should give him the options on which players to give chance to,” he added.
Though Pakistan won the two matches they played in New Zealand T20I Tri-Series 2022, fans were not happy about the way Pakistan’s middle-order players played. In Pakistan’s first match of the NZ T20 tri-series, Rizwan scored 78 while Babar scored 22 in Pakistan’s 167 runs total for a 5 wickets loss.
Both opening batters scored 100 runs off the team’s 167 runs while the remaining scored 67 runs. In Pakistan’s second T20 match, Babar scored an unbeaten 79 runs and helped Pakistan to chase down 148 runs target.
Pakistan will play their first match of the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 against India on October 23 in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne.
