With Sarfaraz's SEVENTH consecutive T20 series win I personally feel that the much talked about 'Golden Era' has finally arrived for Pakistan cricket. Two World Class Fast Bowlers, A 19 Y/O leg spinning prodigy, 2 World Class pace bowling alrounders, a batting depth that rivals any other team out there and players who understand the modern game.
The Golden Era is here my friends!
Yaar I genuinely love this team of ours. It's such an upgrade from what we've been witnessing.
Not long ago, these were our last 5 in the ODI team
Afridi
Ajmal
Rahat
Irfan
Junaid
And even tho Ajmal was a beastly bowler out of this lot and Afridi had a second homecoming of sorts, the others were average at best and to add to that all of them had batting skills that would have been bested by their cardboard cutouts placed in front of the wicket. Add to that the terrible fielding ability of these four and our team was like trying to hide all four at places where the ball was least expected to go. The amazing bit was that the top six had a couple of batsmen that in certain conditions and against good/international class bowlers (read. Hafeez vs. Steyn: Shehzad vs. Anyone faster than 120 kph bowling with a new ball: Maqsood not playing on pitches where the ball would bounce higher than the shins) were exact replicas of the bottom 5 in terms of batting skills.
And then came the master upgrade of Bhatti and Anwar Ali and woah the times were tough being a Pakistani cricket fan.
Yes we won in India and South Africa but those series were won by bowlers, one of them would go on to never bowl like that ever again and the other was proved a chucker and ultimately had to leave cricket as a very ordinary bowler.
None of our youngsters have proven their mettle completely and are considered world class by the world but our team did well in the last ICC tournament that it played and the bedrock of the performance were mostly the younger guys. It is a significantly small sample size but the signs are there that pressure doesn't faze these guys as it did for the older generation (class of 2000 etc.).
As of now, no matter how we analyze Talat, Shadab, Fahim, Hassan, Amir it's obvious that they are an upgrade to a lot of players that regularly donned the green color in recent times (Bhatti, Bilal Asif, Anwar Ali, Tanvir etc). On a personal level, these players may flicker for a brief moment and disappear, or they may stay - only time will tell - but what's visible is that we have a team that has flair, ability, and potential (ceiling and potential are the new buzzwords replacing talent so I've upgraded my post too). Whatever the world is doing, we shouldn't care, and with some good bench strength and traditional mighty powers like South Africa and Australia struggling a wee bit, we might do well in upcoming ICC tournaments as well.
The test team will take time to heal from the massive loss of Younus, traditionally we aren't a batting oriented team so a loss of a batsman hurts us more than a bowler. Maybe tomorrow Babar wakes up and realizes his major shortcoming in test cricket and starts his path to being a 40 plus average test bat, Asad finally realizes that it's now or never and that one century at the end of the series in a losing cause will not make him immortal in the cricketing annals, Harris stops getting unfit getting out of bed, and one of Talat or Fahim becomes test class to give us an extra bowling option for overseas test so we can compete but that's basically wishful thinking at best.
The LOI team however is winning fans back, and no matter what naysayers say about our cricket being dead and Pakistan cricket being a story of bygone era with Youtube video montages as our only escape from harsh realities of present-day-cricket, we are competing and beginning to punch exactly as we should. This may or may not be the start of our second golden era, but it's going to make us fans watch cricket with expectation and not hope and wing of prayers.
For a die hard fan who has seen our cricket go to the dogs and then finally have a late surge of revival, that's all that matters.
that too ones against Windies z grade team. 
h
HUMARA
