The team isn't as good as the nation media pundits tend to think. I agree a lot with some of the comments from the team's think tank. While I don't agree with their moves, the team they have, is what it is. No way they should be a top 4 team when they are lacking some clear pieces to make it a complete team. Many of these pundits who address the team themselves were awful in World Cups.
What is the difference in a complete team and Pakistan's current team that went to the WC? For one, a batting lineup that can sustain a high run rate. While we have made improvements since the Misbah era, we've still not caught up with the elite teams. Bowling? Again, we're not that good. We have some great fast bowling, but they lack discipline and need quality support from their spinners. Which we don't have. Sure if we had Nasim Shah we would have had a better bowling attack, but the weakness is still there. Even our quicks, they are not disciplined. Which is why you need to balance them out with some pressure building spinners. Our spin attack was even worse disciplined and gave up too much.
We took a T20 team and approach, and tried to make it into a ODI team. These are two different set ups. The issue I see is that we've focused our player development into T20. I wouldn't be so surprised if we have a very strong T20 WC in June 2024 without too many changes. What we need is to develop some more balance into the ODI team. It's been quite clear we lack at least 3 types of players. A wrist spinner that can apply some pressure, take wickets. A top order batsmen that can push Rizwan down to 5th (where he should play) while keeping the run rate high. And a late order big hitter (Ifthikar is ok, but not enough).
