CRICKET
What has changed for
Pakistan under Azhar?
I
t doesn't take long to flip the narrative.At the end of
April, Pakistan ended up on the wrong side of a whitewash in Bangladesh. This was seen in the local press
as the nadir, a "national embarrassment", the "lowest
point". A decrepit system that had produced a generation that wasn't good enough - added to Pakistan's role
as a pariah in cricket's accelerated evolution - had meant
that they had been left behind by the rest of the world
as far as the ODI game was concerned. Azhar Ali was
just mini-Misbah, another of the establishment's cronies,
leading Pakistan further into the depths.Now, though,
we know the truth. The only problem with Pakistan was
the negative attitude of Misbah-ul-Haq / the
disruptive influence of Shahid
Afridi (delete as
per your biases). All Pakistan
needed was a
middle
order
that could bat
briskly / a lower
order that could
bat
responsibly (delete as
per your biases). And this is
proved by how
well
Pakistan
are batting now,
led by Azhar - who is the captain that Misbah should
have been: conservative yet still allowing his batsmen
enough freedom to express themselves. It really doesn't
take long to flip the narrative. But the trouble with all-encompassing narratives is that they risk relying on small
sample sizes. Perhaps it really is the dawn of a new age
for Pakistani batting, but basing that on what we have
seen so far seems reductive. The question to be asked
is: what has really changed? One unprecedented change
has been to Pakistan's fielding. Despite the presence of
Rahat Ali and Mohammad Irfan - men who make Bambi
on ice look like a Roger Federer forehand - Pakistan
now have a fielding unit that can no longer be described
as something more suited to being watched on a blackand-white TV. But that doesn't affect the batting or the
narrative. The other change - and the stat that is being
fingered repeatedly - has been in the scores Pakistan
are putting up now. Whereas 250 was widely seen as
the limit of Pakistan's ambitions under Misbah, it is now
par for the course. Proof, if ever it was needed that the
batsmen were being held back. Pakistan are putting up
big scores, the batsmen are batting faster, all is right
with the world. Yet deconstructing the numbers reveals
a different picture. In Bangladesh, Pakistan scored 239
and 250 in their two ODIs batting first, in comparison
to the 253 they averaged under Misbah there with the
same parameters. What followed was a home series
against Zimbabwe - which really doesn't have an equivalent in the Misbah
or Afridi eras; while
the UAE served as a
pretty decent alternative, there is no place
like your actual home,
as Dorothy so nearly
said. Playing on pitches that you grew up
on, where your performances resulted in
selection for the national team, is something that is taken for
granted
elsewhere,
but that's not the case
in Pakistan (it's something Ahmer Naqvi
and I have previously
covered). On the odd
occasion, the tracks in the Emirates were carbon copies of List A tracks in Pakistan (for instance, on the Sri
Lanka tour of 2013-14, when the scoreline was 3-2 in
Pakistan's favour). Thus the "change" has really been
based on the four ODIs in Sri Lanka, it would seem.
Perhaps a more accurate reflection of Pakistan under
Misbah, and what has actually changed, can be gathered from Pakistan's record in the UAE over the past
four years. Pakistan's average score batting first under
Misbah there was 246, which is neither here nor there.
But delve into it a bit more and a clearer picture emerges
- Pakistan's average score when they p ^YY Z\