What’s gone wrong with Sarfraz XI?

New Zealand have just whitewashed Champions Trophy winners Pakistan by 5-0, maintaining their winning streak in all forms of the game to a record-breaking 12 matches.

The sad part is, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Despite their brilliant performance in Champions Trophy 2017, doubts remained about Pakistan’s performance in alien conditions such as those in New Zealand.

Things went horribly wrong for our batting. With 262 the highest and 74 the lowest totals for the visitors, the clean sweep is not too difficult to understand. Our batsmen were no match for Martin Guptill, Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor and Colin Munro, who ran away with 310, 261, 169 and 156 runs, respectively. Guptill averaged an astounding 77.50 runs per innings, while Captain Dependable Williamson averaged 52.

For Pakistan, Fakhar made 150 runs in four games with an average of 50, but the senior batsmen mostly disappointed. Hafeez made 148 runs at an average of 29. The young Shadab Khan impressed again, making 140 runs and averaging 35. Haris Sohail played just two games but proved himself again with 113 runs.

Pakistan’s main disappointment was Captain Sarfraz, who could only manage 79 runs in the series. Faheem Ashraf, Shoaib Malik, Babar Azam and Azhar Ali all looked clueless at the crease. Their 14, 12, 6 and 4 runs average throughout the series is a serious cause of concern for Pakistan. If your top and middle order can’t survive the first power play, than rest of the story is pretty useless to tell.

While watching Pakistan bat, one could see the discomfort on the faces of our batsmen and their shot selection showed that we didn’t have any great game plan. If we had one, we executed that pretty badly.

Even before the start of the series, everybody was talking about the brilliance of Tim Southee and Trent Boult. Both represent a quick and accurate pair of new ball bowlers. We should have known not to play them recklessly. Yet they took 17 wickets during the series, with Boult averaging 19 and Southee 23. We failed to stand our ground against them.

Bowling has always been considered a strength for Pakistan team. Yet our main strike bowler Mohammad Amir bowled like a rookie, taking only two wickets in four matches with an average of 72 and looking completely off color. In fact, in last 12 months he has taken just 15 wickets in 14 matches, with an average of almost 41. In between the year, he showed glimpses of his brilliance like with his performance in the final of Champions Trophy against India, but overall these stats aren’t satisfactory at all. He is a far better bowler than this.

The absence of Junaid Khan and Usman Shinwari cost Pakistan a lot. During the series, Rumman Raees, Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf and Shadab Khan all took very few wickets with an average of no less than 35. Considering their talent, this is below par performance and at the same time demands a probe to check what exactly went wrong. New Zealand batsmen, most of the time, seemed at ease against our bowlers, which is also a cause of concern. Shadab bowled a few good spells here and there but that was clearly not enough.

Last but not the least, skipper Sarfraz needs to up his game a bit. His own performance will set the tone for the entire team. It’s tough to be a captain and tougher to be a captain of Pakistan team. People expect our cricket team to win and overseas tours are no easy task. In order to win overseas, Sarfraz and the team management have to take a few bold decisions. A few of our senior players aren’t performing well to merit a place in the side. Therefore, it’s time for them to either hang their boots or wait to be booted out.

A new team will always take time to settle and perform, which we should wait for. But, at the same time, defeats without showing any spine and seniors playing just to cement their places in the next few games aren’t acceptable. Fingers crossed for the T20 series, because to perform well Pakistan have to bring something different out of their bag of tricks. As fans of an unpredictable Pakistan team, we are hoping for the best.