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How did Islamabad United bottle this?

SangasCoverDrive

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Lost only two games in the league stage and then lost as many games in two days to get knocked out of the tournament. How did it happen?

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They could not handle pressure of knockout games.

Some awful bowling against Multan and then poor batting today against Zalmi. Also dropping Zazai didn’t help!
 
Top of the group table means nothing when it comes to the knockout stages.

It was 2 pressure matches and as Shadab said, they couldn't handle the pressure.
 
Well its not only pressure. The main reason is Shadab Khan. I mean he is the captain but he cant bat or bowl. He is the weakest link.
 
Not a knock on IU but in general I am never convinced by teams that peak too early
 
Top of the group table means nothing when it comes to the knockout stages.

It was 2 pressure matches and as Shadab said, they couldn't handle the pressure.

They easily had the strongest XI of everyone else in the tournament along with a long long batting line-up. Shadab has had a poor tournament with the bat and an ok season with the ball.
 
They easily had the strongest XI of everyone else in the tournament along with a long long batting line-up. Shadab has had a poor tournament with the bat and an ok season with the ball.

How was it an okay season with the ball? Has the standard fallen so low?
 
They easily had the strongest XI of everyone else in the tournament along with a long long batting line-up. Shadab has had a poor tournament with the bat and an ok season with the ball.

Irrelevant. They bottled it when it really mattered, losing their 2 most important matches of the tournament.
 
Shadab up the order and moving around position caused this. I also don't know why their wicketkeeper was batting higher too.

Asif Ali, Talat, Iftikhar this is their middle order who have all reliably performed over multiple PSLs. And yet they are pushed down/dropped. They should all be batting higher. Batting them so low (or dropping them all together) doesn't allow them to get consistency or show faith in them. They took a fairly secure middle order (for Pakistan's standard) and destroyed it.
 
You cannot win a tournament when your captain thinks he is Steve Smith and Shane Warne rolled into one but is actually a glorified tail-ender and a glorified part-timer.
 
Group stages seemed to go a bit too well for them.

But when it mattered, several of their players didn't show up.

I wonder why no one is pointing out. Akhlaq has been technically very poor wicket keeper even by local standards.

In hind sight they should have stuck with Roheel. I know he couldn't perform in few matches but atleast he was good wicket keep and Islamabad had a long batting line up.

I think wicketkeeper has been the weakest link for them. wi
 
Too much of a comfortable time in the group matches. When the pressure came in the knock out games, a lot of players were exposed
 
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