Where have the Pakistani Big Hitters gone?

[Shri]

they have terrific stroke makers, although they don't match modern day England

Lets not get carried away now.

 

[vcs]

arguably the greatest lower order batsman in a decade if not ever in Shafiq.

No

 

[tobe_ornot2]

No

More centuries than anyone at no. 6, almost pulled off the greatest chase in test history and averaged comfortably over 60 while Pakistan went 2 years and 7 test series unbeaten, while never, not once playing at home.

So he is definitely in the argument.

If you read the articles, the pitches and balls weren't as bad in the 80s/90s though. Whilst you may dispute that, the articles provide quite a lot of evidence.

I did and I'll take their word for it, no reason not to but again, it's not as if the standard was high. Most of pakistan's best played in England to find real quality cricket.

Remember imran khan talked about the same problems 30 years ago. However the system still produced batsmen who were ahead if the curvee. Maybe it still does or they occur in spite of the system? But maybe they aren't being picked.

 

[DriveClub]

More centuries than anyone at no. 6, almost pulled off the greatest chase in test history and averaged comfortably over 60 while Pakistan went 2 years and 7 test series unbeaten, while never, not once playing at home.

So he is definitely in the argument.



I did and I'll take their word for it, no reason not to but again, it's not as if the standard was high. Most of pakistan's best played in England to find real quality cricket.

Remember imran khan talked about the same problems 30 years ago. However the system still produced batsmen who were ahead if the curvee. Maybe it still does or they occur in spite of the system? But maybe they aren't being picked.

That's because some teams have remained stagnant while others have evolved. That's the reason why the gap between the top teams in ODI now Aus, sa, ind, eng and others are higher than ever. It's almost like theres a 2 tier system in ODI cricket now.

 

[DriveClub]

Big hitting is not the be all and end all, otherwise WIs should be a champion odi team. It's more the cake that can score at a fast clip is the most important aspect of ODI batting

 

[quincywagstaff]

I’m not sure this is backed up statistically, but I got the impression that Pakistan seemed to overly rely on Afridi to do their big hitting and the mindset from the other batsmen was “Well, as long as we keep wickets in hand Afridi can score 45 off 15 to reach the target.”

And this was despite Afridi usually promising more than he delivered for the last several years of his career. We saw this in the 2015 WC where Pakistan plodded along as if it was still the 1990s, Afridi would provide a brief 20 run hard-hitting cameo and a modest score was the result.

 

[Black_Warrior]

The pitches were changed around 02 and the balls were changed under Inti in the last 5 years. If you care to look at some of the scorecard of FC games, it will be clear just how irregular and inconsistent they are.

 

[Black_Warrior]

Very good pieces! In particular the first one. I had no idea the work Bazid Khan was trying to get done, good on him! Since the article is from 2015, has he made any headway?

However, I have to go back to what my thread is about, pitches and balls were just as bad in the 80s and 90s and if they are even worse now, why are they producing test quality players? Test cricket is the highest form of the game and Pak have some of the games absolute stand outs in Shah and Ali (Misbah and Khan just retired) with arguably the greatest lower order batsman in a decade if not ever in Shafiq.

Limited overs formats in the last 5-6 years have changed more than they did in the decade before. They are now a very different beast to Test cricket. Pakistan has had their most successful run in Test cricket at the same time that they had their worst decade in ODI cricket. These two things are not contradictory but a reflection of where Pakistan stands. The reason they are not behind in Test cricket is because despite their style being old school, the format itself hasn't changed in 200 years. So yes you have the likes of Warner or Sehwag or Kohli who have an attacking game even in Test cricket, but you can be an Azhar Ali, bat with a strike rate of 40 and still score tons of runs. That's the format.

Asad Shafiq is an excellent stroke player, and would have had more runs in Test cricket had he batted in the top order and the people writing him off in this thread are people who don't know who he is. But he is not a LO player. He needs 30-40 balls to get set, and in that period he will barely score 5 runs. In that period, he can't rotate the strike nor does he time them well, and he will leave a lot of deliveries. Once he survives that, he can get a hundred. LO cricket does not allow him that luxury. So once again, when you're talking about Pakistan's LO problems, you have to take out the test team successes like Ali and Shafiq out of it. Yasir Shah, their main match winner in Test cricket is not LO bowler. He does not have the variety or guile of a Tahir. Tahir in turn is not a test spinner. These are not contradictions but differences in the formats today.

India's first class system and pitches are hardly world class and they have terrific stroke makers, although they don't match modern day England...who were never famous for their stroke makers?

Untrue. India's first class system and state of pitches is far far ahead of Pak cricket. India also uses SG balls which are international standard.

Sorry for the long post but I am just so lost as to how a country with genuine strikers goes from hero to zero, even though the first class system, pitches and quality of equipment has often been poor. Didn't Imran Khan mention the same problems in domestic cricket in the 80s that Bazid is doing now?

Some of them, yes. But not all. A lot of the problems like state of pitches (Rameez to blame for this) and the balls are current problems. And he also kept warning that Pakistan's successes in the 80s and 90s were despite the system and it was just a matter of time. And it's not that Pakistan are suddenly bad. It has been rotting for a long time, even during previous generations.

Here is a fun fact and you can look this up. Since 2001, Pakistan have a negative W/L ratio in ODIs against against every top side (except India).

And if you take out 2001-2005, then it's negative against India too.

 

[honestbharani]

More centuries than anyone at no. 6, almost pulled off the greatest chase in test history and averaged comfortably over 60 while Pakistan went 2 years and 7 test series unbeaten, while never, not once playing at home.

So he is definitely in the argument.

It is indeed a sad state for Pakistan cricket when #6 is considered a "lower order" position by its "fans"...

 

[Kirkut]

Pakistan received flak for having irresponsible and erratic batsmanship in the past, as a result the focus has shifted from big hitting to responsible batsmanship. The positives of this have been noticed in the England test tour last year, negatives would be inability to play big shots in final LOI overs.