Afridi's role though should not be that of a batsmen but rather a lower order bowling allrounder. Yes, his application in this instance definitely could have been much better, but he can't be the sole person on which to place the blame. I mean how well did "genuine allrounder" Sohail Tanvir bat?
India should be last chance saloon for Akmal. If he doesn't clean up his wicketkeeping by then then I'd be totally in favor of his removal.
Well those two innings were better than the zero contributions made by the majority of the Pakistani batsman throughout this series. And even with Khan’s dismissal being probably the most idiotic of them all today, who in your opinion should replace him?
Considering he was out first ball, not very good.
Akmal did open...
It'd be unfair to drop him right now, after his most recent successes. But it's poor form to call him a worthy ODI player on the basis of 2 innings against the same opposition in the same series. Younis Khan has played a lot of ODIs and has been very mediocre for a very long time. When he starts performing with any positive consistency, praise him for it. But until then, he should not be one of the first names on the team sheet. It's not a case of form is temporary and class is permanent with Younis, as he has never been anything but a very average batsman in ODIs.
Why wait for Indian series to end up in farce? the chances of Nazir having some success with the bat is greater than the chances of Akmal doing decently with the gloves.
Afridi has international experiance (was infact the most experianced OD player in the side) Tanvir was the junior most.As such Afridi was sent up the batting order.Any player that had played as much cricket as Afridi would probably had finished the match in a better manner.
I prefer this one ...If this was a World Cup semi final, it would be more appropriate. However, this is a pretty good one, so upon request:
OK, just kidding.
I don't know, maybe we should try him as a specialist opener in ODIs, the way our openers are going.
"Andre unfortunately only had one line that he was dishing out to Shoaib Malik and the boys so it got a bit monotonous there. We just had a chat to Andre and said to Graeme Smith, 'Well, look he's only traipsing out one line, it's getting a bit boring'."
-Simon Taufel
I would actually be for that move. I think he's got the technique to be a decent opener with maybe Butt and without having to worry about keeping, he might actually do well.I don't know, maybe we should try him as a specialist opener in ODIs, the way our openers are going.