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Lessons learned from Pakistan's 2026 World Cup exit

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What are the biggest lessons learned for the Pakistan team from their bad performance and exit from the world cup?

1. Retain Fakhar, Fahim, Abrar
2. Kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha
3. Replace Hesson as coach?

Who should be the captain without Agha?
Who should be the replacements if they kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha?
 
No wt20 for another 2 years so focus on ODIs and tests.
Kick these idiots out of the t20 team apart from openers, Abrar, Usman and Mirza.
Agha's tactics remind me of Yousaf's captaincy stint in 2010 NZ and Aus. No idea and always running scared.
Younis, Malik, Afridi, Hafeez, Sarfraz all would use spinners to attack and choke out the opposition but Agha is afraid to bring them in Powerplay and cant provide close in fielders giving easy singles.
 
T20 SQUAD

Fakhar Zaman (c)
Sahibzada Farhan
Saim Ayub
Khawaja Nafay
Irfan Niazi
Hassan Nawaz
Mohammad Haris (wk)
Abbas Afridi
Naseem Shah
Abrar Ahmed
Salman Mirza /Usman Tariq

ODI SQUAD

Fakhar Zaman (c)
Sahibzada Farhan
Saim Ayub
Salman Agha
Usman Khan (wk)
Irfan Niazi
Faheem Ashraf
Shaheen Afridi
Naseem Shah
Abrar Ahmed
Usman Tariq
 
We kept playing the wrong team the entire tournament, work on general awareness. You can have India level talent, but if you are stupid then you are going nowhere.
 
You guys should have a lesson learned draft ready before every tournament, would save you a lot of time. For Rizwan it is either win or learn, for Pakistan it is always learn and never win.
 
jnaveen1980 said:
Lack of all rounders cost the tournament for pakistan :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
True, look at the quality of the 'all rounders' they have lol. I have in my life never seen Shadab performing with bat or ball, ever. Uber pathetic bowler, below average batter, I don't know who does he blackmail to keep his place in every single major ICC tournaments. Is he related to Munira or somebody from the army?
 
YousafTheBeast said:
T20 SQUAD

Fakhar Zaman (c)
Sahibzada Farhan
Saim Ayub
Khawaja Nafay
Irfan Niazi
Hassan Nawaz
Mohammad Haris (wk)
Abbas Afridi
Naseem Shah
Abrar Ahmed
Salman Mirza /Usman Tariq

ODI SQUAD

Fakhar Zaman (c)
Sahibzada Farhan
Saim Ayub
Salman Agha
Usman Khan (wk)
Irfan Niazi
Faheem Ashraf
Shaheen Afridi
Naseem Shah
Abrar Ahmed
Usman Tariq
Click to expand...

Fakhar is 35 years old. He should retire and Pakistan must build a dynamic team for the future.
 
I’m
rickroll said:
What are the biggest lessons learned for the Pakistan team from their bad performance and exit from the world cup?

1. Retain Fakhar, Fahim, Abrar
2. Kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha
3. Replace Hesson as coach?

Who should be the captain without Agha?
Who should be the replacements if they kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha?
Click to expand...

No lessons learned. Pakistan will double down on its tried and failed formula. We have seen this film since 2023.
 
jeeteshssaxena said:
It was a spirited batting performance by the openers.

The following players should never play a t20i again :

Babar
Nawaz
Shadab
Agha
Usman


Players who should be dropped for atleast the next 3 series

Shaheen
Saim
Naseem
Click to expand...
Agree, but I do not think Naseem should be dropped I think he should lead the pace attack, Also dont think Saim should be dropped either just needs to find form with the bat, the rest I agree with.
 
rickroll said:
What are the biggest lessons learned for the Pakistan team from their bad performance and exit from the world cup?

1. Retain Fakhar, Fahim, Abrar
2. Kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha
3. Replace Hesson as coach?

Who should be the captain without Agha?
Who should be the replacements if they kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha?
Click to expand...
I'm afraid you are taking the wrong lessons.

Restore the Quad, and reclaim your greatness.

Cricket gods punished Pak for insulting King Babar
 
Hesson's team was built around railu kattas. That is the biggest lesson.

If we are banking on likes of Nawaz, Shadab and Faheem Ashraf to win us a tournament, you know it is destined for doom.

Find ATLEAST 2 more reliable batters. It is impossible to compete with just one batsman in t20s.
 
Bits and pieces players are only good against minnows. You need specialists, or proper allrounders like Ben Stokes.

And it was a mistake not to open with Fakhar and Farhan all tournament, and finally, Abrar Ahmed should have been dropped after one poor match.
 
Prince of Dorne said:
True, look at the quality of the 'all rounders' they have lol. I have in my life never seen Shadab performing with bat or ball, ever. Uber pathetic bowler, below average batter, I don't know who does he blackmail to keep his place in every single major ICC tournaments. Is he related to Munira or somebody from the army?
Click to expand...
he's saqlain's son in law so he gets favours
 
I don't like it that everyone is going after Pakistan team players - from us to ex players, to celebrities.

Our players are playing under oppressive conditions and for anyone to survive, let alone perform, is unthinkable.

They are just lucky they are a rung or two above our hockey players.

They gave their best, some of them underperformed, some were wrong selections. But one cannot say they didn't give their all.

May the fortunes of the team and the country turn, sooner rather than later.
 
rickroll said:
What are the biggest lessons learned for the Pakistan team from their bad performance and exit from the world cup?

1. Retain Fakhar, Fahim, Abrar
2. Kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha
3. Replace Hesson as coach?

Who should be the captain without Agha?
Who should be the replacements if they kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha?
Click to expand...
Add Usman Khan, Naseem Shah to that list... how on earth can retain Fahim lol...

Nafay , Maaz Sadaqat , Haris (wk), Hasan Nawaz , Irfan Khan Niazi , Haider Ali, Arafat Minhas , Sufyan Muqeem , Faisal Akram, Abbas Afridi, Waseem Jr , along with the openers and Saim ( subject to improved performance )

Bring back Hasan Ali who did well in his comeback , Damads kept him away..
 
rickroll said:
What are the biggest lessons learned for the Pakistan team from their bad performance and exit from the world cup?

1. Retain Fakhar, Fahim, Abrar
2. Kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha
3. Replace Hesson as coach?

Who should be the captain without Agha?
Who should be the replacements if they kick out Babar, Shadab, Shaheen, Nawaz, Agha?
Click to expand...
4. Perhaps its time for PCT fans to find a different team to support ... thats the biggest lesson of all IMO

@Mesozoic
 
ask_analyse_act said:
Add Usman Khan, Naseem Shah to that list... how on earth can retain Fahim lol...

Nafay , Maaz Sadaqat , Haris (wk), Hasan Nawaz , Irfan Khan Niazi , Haider Ali, Arafat Minhas , Sufyan Muqeem , Faisal Akram, Abbas Afridi, Waseem Jr , along with the openers and Saim ( subject to improved performance )

Bring back Hasan Ali who did well in his comeback , Damads kept him away..
Click to expand...
Oh dear. This recycled waste of Faheem, Nawaz , Shadab and Hasan Ali has gone on for far too long in pak cricket. They all have a million lives each.
 
Most important lesson

If you are hell bent on picking chuckers, at least make sure they are good enough first :ajmal2 :moha
 
Now I’ve calmed down I guess we did learn a few things. Fakhar and Farhan can open. Abrar and Usman should both play. And I think the allrounder experiment has failed, they’re just not good enough. Obviously Agha and Babar have to go.

1. Fakhar
2. Farhan
3. Usman khan/abdullah/saim/anyone
4. Hasan Nawaz
5. Irfan Niazi
6. Haris/Nafay (wk)
7. Shaheen
8. Rauf/Naseem
9. Mirza
10. Usman
11. Abrar

I’d rather give the gloves to a proper keeper. Don’t know much of nafay. Think Haris is better than the gloves but has to concentrate on keeping first and batting a bonus down the order.

Tired of allrounders. Might just as well play Shaheen in the allrounder slot if that way we can play both Usman and Abrar and have three fast bowling options. Not like shaheen’s much worse with the bat.
 
The only lesson learnt is that we Pakistanis will always go into tournaments having a roller coaster ride going till the last game trying to beat the NRR even when we are winning.

Just shut the hell up.
We are fed up. Our hearts have felt too much pan and anxiety.
 
ads101 said:
Now I’ve calmed down I guess we did learn a few things. Fakhar and Farhan can open. Abrar and Usman should both play. And I think the allrounder experiment has failed, they’re just not good enough. Obviously Agha and Babar have to go.

1. Fakhar
2. Farhan
3. Usman khan/abdullah/saim/anyone
4. Hasan Nawaz
5. Irfan Niazi
6. Haris/Nafay (wk)
7. Shaheen
8. Rauf/Naseem
9. Mirza
10. Usman
11. Abrar

I’d rather give the gloves to a proper keeper. Don’t know much of nafay. Think Haris is better than the gloves but has to concentrate on keeping first and batting a bonus down the order.

Tired of allrounders. Might just as well play Shaheen in the allrounder slot if that way we can play both Usman and Abrar and have three fast bowling options. Not like shaheen’s much worse with the bat.
Click to expand...
You didn’t name your captain..
 
- Don’t select names/history, pick on performance/form.
- Pick players for specific roles, communicate them clearly, and judge performance accordingly and not only through conventional metrics.
- Pick specialists for specialist jobs.
- Have flexible plans and backup plans so you don’t have to say “it would have been a totally different story if we had won the toss”.
- A captain must be someone who is an automatic selection in the XI.
- Build your bench strength through player rotation.

But then these aren’t lessons that this WC has taught us. We have known all this for years and yet we don’t address it and it would be wishful thinking to hope this loss will change anything.
 
Guys like Shadab and Nawaz (spin bowling all arounders) can be easily replaced by guys like Arafat Minhas, Mehran Mumtaz, Qasim Akram, Mubashir Khan or even Asif Afridi

You can pick any of the 2 whom I mentioned and they will do better than Shadab or Nawaz.
 
Fakhar will be 38 next World Cup in Australia

He will be done.

Farhan has another 2 world cup’s left in him. If you want him to fire, then you need him to get as much exposure down under so that he’s ready for those tracks and we don’t have another RizBar backwas

Saim needs to get his act together. The wickets in Australia suit his style of batting but he might get blacklisted from T20s the way he has been letting Pakistan down.
 
ads101 said:
Now I’ve calmed down I guess we did learn a few things. Fakhar and Farhan can open. Abrar and Usman should both play. And I think the allrounder experiment has failed, they’re just not good enough. Obviously Agha and Babar have to go.

1. Fakhar
2. Farhan
3. Usman khan/abdullah/saim/anyone
4. Hasan Nawaz
5. Irfan Niazi
6. Haris/Nafay (wk)
7. Shaheen
8. Rauf/Naseem
9. Mirza
10. Usman
11. Abrar

I’d rather give the gloves to a proper keeper. Don’t know much of nafay. Think Haris is better than the gloves but has to concentrate on keeping first and batting a bonus down the order.

Tired of allrounders. Might just as well play Shaheen in the allrounder slot if that way we can play both Usman and Abrar and have three fast bowling options. Not like shaheen’s much worse with the bat.
Click to expand...
What did Hasan Nawaz do sitting outside the team to be included in it? Is it because some incumbents are so poor that he’d be better than them even without proving anything?
 
This is about the level of Pakistan team at the moment. If a team is performing to it's capabilities you can't make too many claims about lessons etc.

Just need to keep trying to improve and trying to blood in players.

Pakistan took some big steps in this tournament by benching Babar and sometimes Shaheen.

Hesson needs to cut down on the rellu kattas and start fielding some more specialists.

Anyway, it's hard to berate the players or to be too sad. This is the current expectation.
 
Lessons:

Bring back Rizwan and make him captain,

Have Babar & Rizwan open the batting

Fire Hesson the evil gorah and bring back Misbah ul Haq as coach

Hire Saqlain as the teams spiritual guide because who needs a batting, bowling or fielding coach?

Give the VC to Shaheen Shah Afridi with the promise that he will be captain at the next T20 WC

And Finally!

Arrange T20 series in the coming months against Namibia, Nepal & Canada; the country and especially the current group of Pakistan fans could do with a moral boost and let everyone else know how wrong we were.
 
YousafTheBeast said:
T20 SQUAD

Fakhar Zaman (c)
Sahibzada Farhan
Saim Ayub
Khawaja Nafay
Irfan Niazi
Hassan Nawaz
Mohammad Haris (wk)
Abbas Afridi
Naseem Shah
Abrar Ahmed
Salman Mirza /Usman Tariq

ODI SQUAD

Fakhar Zaman (c)
Sahibzada Farhan
Saim Ayub
Salman Agha
Usman Khan (wk)
Irfan Niazi
Faheem Ashraf
Shaheen Afridi
Naseem Shah
Abrar Ahmed
Usman Tariq
Click to expand...
Fakhar is too old for captaincy

He should focus on odi WC 2027
 
charlie007 said:
What did Hasan Nawaz do sitting outside the team to be included in it? Is it because some incumbents are so poor that he’d be better than them even without proving anything?
Click to expand...
Can’t think of anyone else. If someone better comes in fine.

He was performing in PSL and international cricket. We then moved him around the order to accommodate captain and his form went. He should have been left alone at no.4.
 
Obaidd said:
You didn’t name your captain..
Click to expand...
It’s probably Shaheen. But I’m not over the moon with that choice given how bad he bowled today 😄. But realistically it’s going to be either him or Shadab. No one else has much captaincy experience.
 
shah9425 said:
Fakhar is too old for captaincy

He should focus on odi WC 2027
Click to expand...

I’d keep him as captain for 2028 WT20 only because we have no other option.

Agha’s captaincy has been so bad that I wouldn’t consider him for ODI captaincy.

It would either be Fakhar or stick with Shaheen imo
 
YousafTheBeast said:
I’d keep him as captain for 2028 WT20 only because we have no other option.

Agha’s captaincy has been so bad that I wouldn’t consider him for ODI captaincy.

It would either be Fakhar or stick with Shaheen imo
Click to expand...
We should consider long term options

Fakhar has not much time left not even sure if he will be able make it to 2028

Meanwhile Shaheen needs to be removed asap
This clown can't even bowl 4 proper overs in t20
How will he bowl 10 overs
 
Fakhar is too old to learn captaincy. I’m really surprised he has never even captained a PSL team. So don’t know if he even wants it anyway. Especially given Lahore didn’t really have many consistent captains till Shaheen came in, you think surely Fakhar would have got if he wanted it.
 
Hitman said:
Exit? They still have a chance. Mohsin Naqvi has the talent of stealing trophies.
Click to expand...
That was India fault, for not accepting it...he waited there for them to take it and accept it. India is to blame for this whole fiasco and all the fiasco that has happened in world cricket.
 
Play your specialists first with one/two allrounders at best. Nawaz, Shadab and Faheem are bowling allrounders. They may do well in bilateral t20s and against smaller nations but when it comes to crunch games, they will fail to deliver. They just don’t have that quality and are more suited to t20 leagues.

We went in with around 5 openers in the squad which was baffling. Agha, probably our only middle over batsman and best player of spin decided to come in at 3 and play a pinch hitter role and it was a disaster.

Babar who is more suited to opening/3 and better against pace came in at 4 which was again wrong because he struggles after the powerplay.

You need specialists in your team and you need batsmen who have experience in those positions. You cannot put openers in the team in middle over positions and expect them to flourish, it just doesn’t work. The squad which was picked was wrong from the beginning.

I’m very happy for Farhan, he has done well in domestics and deserved a call up and now performed very well. I hope he gets picked in the ODI squad and is tried out against Bangladesh.

We really need to find finishers in the batting line up, death over specialists so a lot of hard work to do before the next couple of tournaments.
 
Another thing I would like to add is that the captain/management need to always have a solid plan B in place.

Often, in big games when teams look to attack us we lose the plot and look lost. This happens in every big tournament, the captain needs to have that tactical nous and always be proactive.

This happened in the India game when Tariq came to bowl in the latter overs, the management should have told him to bring him in early so he can attack. We were very reactive throughout the tournament.
 
ads101 said:
Fakhar is too old to learn captaincy. I’m really surprised he has never even captained a PSL team. So don’t know if he even wants it anyway. Especially given Lahore didn’t really have many consistent captains till Shaheen came in, you think surely Fakhar would have got if he wanted it.
Click to expand...
I think he’s stayed with LQ throughout. He captained a few matches in 2019 (W1 L4) but LQ was really poor around that time. Sohail Akhtar was preferred over him for regular captaincy. Those were the dark days of LQ.

Don’t think he wants to captain or has too many years of intl cricket left anyways. But the captain should be an automatic name on the team sheet. Shaheen ain’t that guy.
 
Pakistan’s exit from the T20 World Cup 2026 didn’t shock me at this point, it almost felt predictable.

It feels like we turned up to a Formula 1 race with a 2005 Corolla. While the rest of the world is casually scoring 200 like it’s normal and our players are content and celebrating for reaching a “competitive” 150. Modern T20 cricket is about fearless hitting, but we’re still playing like there’s a fifth day coming.

Stop picking players on past glory. Big names don’t win matches but brave cricket does. The teams that attacked from ball one are the ones still in the tournament. Other teams pick players who play fearless cricket and we pick players and then hope they magically become fearless.

If someone is young and fearless, back him properly instead of dropping him after one failure. As again I've always said the issue is mindset. If this exit teaches us to modernize, back young fearless players properly, and stop treating 150 like it’s Mount Everest, then maybe this will be something.

Until then… see you at the next “rebuild phase.” 😅
 
Obaidd said:
I think he’s stayed with LQ throughout. He captained a few matches in 2019 (W1 L4) but LQ was really poor around that time. Sohail Akhtar was preferred over him for regular captaincy. Those were the dark days of LQ.

Don’t think he wants to captain or has too many years of intl cricket left anyways. But the captain should be an automatic name on the team sheet. Shaheen ain’t that guy.
Click to expand...
It has to be an experienced captain. We have seen how players that are simply the best in their team are clueless in captaincy. They have to have practiced it. Fakhar doesn’t have the time now to practice and learn it.

Shaheen might have his faults, but let’s face it I doubt he is being dropped anytime soon realistically. He’s a regular. And if he’s consistently in the team he might as well captain. There is no one else that I can think of who is consistently in the team and captaincy experience. That after all is probably why he became ODI captain.

Who would you choose?
 
Shadab
Nawaz
Faheem

Will be dropped.

And they will make a mysterious comeback right before the next World Cup.
 
You guys can’t pack up the team with bits & pieces players, you need specialist bowlers & batsmen.

For all the attention on the batsmen, your bowling has been pathetic. Imagine you guys had the luxury to select a team full of spinners for the slow turning SL wickets, and still couldn’t get the opposition and couldn’t win any match other than the minnows?
 
Learns:

1. Blackmail PCB for higher value central contracts.
2. Remove 1 league restriction per year.
3. No need to play domestic- get close in bed to Aaqib.
4. Hire a good social media team.
5. Get on the planes for vacation tours.
 
Pak will never learn anything.come in to a wc again, They will start quadrat business till they crash out.There is neither incentive for performance nor punishment for shameless stuff.
 
Lack of accountability cost us.

Our openers gave us a start we could not have dreamt of. But afterwards no one took accountability.
 
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