(This was written after the England series, I forgot to post at the time.)
I had Pakistan as a favourite to make the World Test Championship. It wasn't that I thought they were in great Test form, it was more about the fact I thought they only had to sleepwalk through to the finals. Outside of Sri Lanka, they had by far the best schedule.
But if you want form, it was patchy, but there. They went winless in the back half of 2020 across five tests against England and New Zealand. But then came home and rolled South Africa two nil, and the won easily in Zimbabwe.
I wasn't expecting them to beat anyone better than them, but just compete with them in favourable conditions. And continue to win mostly against the weaker sides.
As it currently stands in this WTC cycle, Pakistan has won less than half their matches. Sri Lanka, the other team with a great schedule and they have a five and four record. When this WTC started, it would have been crazy to suggest Sri Lanka would do better than Pakistan, but they are.
Part of the reason that Sri Lanka is doing well is squaring a series with Pakistan at home. But they also took a test off Australia, which hasn't been easy in this cycle, and you will remember, Pakistan failed to do that in three attempts.
There is no doubt that Pakistan has been a stinking hot mess in this tournament. And so I wanted to go through a take a look at why.
On the surface level Pakistan's batting looks great, Babar has averaged 62 in the WTC, and made 1200 runs while doing it. Good enough for third on the highest run scorers. Abdullah Shafique has put tougher a Marnus Labuschagne start to his career so far, and is one of the best players under 25 in the world. Imam-ul-Haq has been a star in his few Tests as well. Then you have Azhar Ali and Mohammad Rizwan, both being muted, but still averaging mid 30s., which is not a dumpster fire.
But the real problem with Pakistan is that the batting drop-off often finishes at the number five position. At numbers six seven and eight, it's pretty rough. All three spots are underperforming, which means that even when Pakistan is batting well, you know you can get on top simply by getting to four wickets. That's a huge advantage when you are playing them.
You can see that they slip back a fair bit after the top order. And it's the consistent nature of the batting being worse than others. All the way down to number eight that is the problem.
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