Pakistan have shown the world that they are a fighting side

[Ecoman]

Yes Pakistan are down 2-0 and most likely to lose 3-0 based on what we seen so far of the third test. However has Pakistan really done as bad as we make out and have they done better then any Pakistan side in the last decade or two?

First test: we were rolled rolled over in the first innings however in our second innings nearly pulled of one of the greatest run chases of all time and in Australia not at home. I can't imagine any other test nation making that come back especially away from home.

Second test: we battled well and responded beautifully in our first innings and game was headed for a draw, a fantastic fight back from Pakistan from the first test and all looked set for a boring draw. However the 2nd innings collapse left us lost at sea and over shadowed all the work we did prior to the collapse during the match.

The third test: Australia put up some solid runs in their first innings however one expects that when the pitch was flatter then a Dubai runway and being in home conditions, they were expected to make a large score however on the second day we did fairly wel to try to restrict them to 538 and not 600 plus. The two seasoned veterans are out their now and putting up a solid fight and only time will tell.

The point I'm trying to make is Pakistan lost these matches based on a extremely poor session that destroyed them or one surreal session that brought them back into it. If things just went a slight different way it would of been either Australia 1-0 in this match as the second test was a draw and all to play for in the third test. Or Pakistan could of pulled of the surreal win in the first test match and drawer the second test match leaving Pakistan 1-0 up and plying for the win or draw in this test match. Either way the fact it was this close shows how wel Pakistan fought. The way Pakistan fought this series Australia cold never replicate in UAE. It was always a expected white wash with no close games. While Pakistan may get white washed but put up a surreal fight, and at times looked to steal the games away from Australia from unthinkable positions.

We must lick our wounds, take the positives, look to work on the negotiate s and look to rebuild and injection young blood into the side like Australia, England, South Africa, India have. It may be hard but it's best for the long run.

 

[Slog]

the bottom line is we are going to be 12-0 down in Australia

And its not called fighting when you are inserted to bat in the second session of the final day of a run curtailed match and somehow end up losing all your wickets on the way to an embarrassing loss

 

[JaDed]

I can't imagine any other test nation making that come back especially away from home.

Are you trolling mate?

 

[Ecoman]

the bottom line is we are going to be 12-0 down in Australia


And its not called fighting when you are inserted to bat in the second session of the final day of a run curtailed match and somehow end up losing all your wickets on the way to an embarrassing loss

So it's okay for Australia to be hammered abroad but not Asian teams? Hypocrisy and colonial thinking installed into us.

Pakistan put up a great fight

 

[Ecoman]

Are you trolling mate?

Not at all, tell me another side who get bowled for a 100 odd then comeback and make nearly 500 in the fourth innings and nearly pull of the greatest chase of all time and abroad in foreign conditions?

 

[GLORY OF '92]

To some extent but the MCG loss destroyed everything.

 

[AlphaFighter]

If this was against the ATG Aussie side of 1999 and 2004, i would have agreed but this trust me is a very substandard and very much beatable Australian team that a pretty settled Pakistani test side should have done much better against.

We should have come much better prepared, at least a month in advance to hold a training camp, to play 3-4 practice games, even the T-20 and ODI series before the test matches to give both our batsmen and bowlers the best chance to acclimatize to the conditions.

 

[Markhor]

We've fought in sessions here and there but as always in Australia we can't perform consistently and decisively enough to force a result.

 

[AlphaFighter]

Not at all, tell me another side who get bowled for a 100 odd then comeback and make nearly 500 in the fourth innings and nearly pull of the greatest chase of all time and abroad in foreign conditions?

End result matters in the end and the End result was that Pakistan lost. There was no pressure on Pakistan in the 4th innings as everyone expected us to lose, likewise the Aussies took it easy and took their foot of the peddle, but the pressure on Shafiq and Yasir Shah told which they succumbed too as we got miraculously close to the target.

In the next test match, how many sides on earth go on to lose a game batting first, posting 450 runs on the board by an innings?

Make no mistake, this tour albeit an important and good learning curve for the younger lot like Azhar Ali, Asad Shafiq, Babar Azam, Sami Aslam, Sharjeel Khan and co, has still been disasterous. Our bowling has been shockingly bad and a real let down.

 

[Abdullah719]

We have gotten decimated in a few sessions which has really hampered our fightbacks and rendered them useless, at the end of the day.

The Gabba effort will still be remembered but the MCG collapse was pretty bad.

The bowling has been dismal for the most part, barring some good spells by Wahab.

 

[Markhor]

If this was against the ATG Aussie side of 1999 and 2004, i would have agreed but this trust me is a very substandard and very much beatable Australian team that a pretty settled Pakistani test side should have done much better against.

We should have come much better prepared, at least a month in advance to hold a training camp, to play 3-4 practice games, even the T-20 and ODI series before the test matches to give both our batsmen and bowlers the best chance to acclimatize to the conditions.

PCB should be whipped and flogged for inadequate preparation. Its like they saw the England series preparation and decided to throw all that out the window. In England, the preparation was near perfect. We arrived early, gained exposure against the Dukes ball and our coaching staff had plenty of time to work with the players. Yet in New Zealand - the first ball of the tour our batsmen faced was on the first morning of the 1st Test !

Yes modern cricket entails tough scheduling pressures - so that's why you have to work around it and make compromises. WI series went on for too long - 2 Tests, 3 ODIs and a T20 would've sufficed. This would've given us more time for these NZ and Australia tours.

One match on a slow, low pitch in Cairns was wholly insufficient. If no Australia A or Shield team was available to play - hell, arrange an intra-squad match. Just get some more practice so we can hit the ground running. We haven't played any Test cricket in Australia for 6 years. We're not India who have the opportunity of playing in Australia nearly every year be it Tests or ODIs. This makes preparation all the more important for a group of players who rarely get to tour outside Asia anyway.

That being said, I doubt more preparation would've made this impotent bowling attack any more effective.

 

[JaDed]

Not at all, tell me another side who get bowled for a 100 odd then comeback and make nearly 500 in the fourth innings and nearly pull of the greatest chase of all time and abroad in foreign conditions?

So many conditions,but here is the thing India in 1978-79 scored 445 while chasing 493 and mind you in that series we lose 3-2 but in one of the victories we defeated Aus by an innings in Sydney!

 

[Chief Destroyer]

We've competed pretty well. The two 40 year olds, Misbah's captaincy and a third seamer to keep up the pressure have been our downfall.

 

[AlphaFighter]

PCB should be whipped and flogged for inadequate preparation. Its like they saw the England series preparation and decided to throw all that out the window. In England, the preparation was near perfect. We arrived early, gained exposure against the Dukes ball and our coaching staff had plenty of time to work with the players. Yet in New Zealand - the first ball of the tour our batsmen faced was on the first morning of the 1st Test !

Yes modern cricket entails tough scheduling pressures - so that's why you have to work around it and make compromises. WI series went on for too long - 2 Tests, 3 ODIs and a T20 would've sufficed. This would've given us more time for these NZ and Australia tours.

One match on a slow, low pitch in Cairns was wholly insufficient. If no Australia A or Shield team was available to play - hell, arrange an intra-squad match. Just get some more practice so we can hit the ground running. We haven't played any Test cricket in Australia for 6 years. We're not India who have the opportunity of playing in Australia nearly every year be it Tests or ODIs. This makes preparation all the more important for a group of players who rarely get to tour outside Asia anyway.

That being said, I doubt more preparation would've made this impotent bowling attack any more effective.

This is why developing a solid bench and even an alternative team is essential. Yes granted modern scheduling doesn't allow this but what the PCB could have done in the 3rd rubber test match was to literally replace the senior Pak team with a Pak A team and send the senior players to NZ early to acclimitize. Or play a Pak A team in a dead rubber final ODI or final T-20.

It all boils down to how badly do the PCB higher ups, employees, selectors and team management want to do well in NZ, Australia and make all out efforts to come to those countries early to acclimitize.

Imran Khan went to war with the PCB to arrive in Australia early i.e. 6 weeks prior to the start of the 1992 WC and the team played close to 4-6 practice games before the WC started officially.

 

[Syed1]

I don't believe in this compete shompete.

We are 2-0 at the moment, soon to be 3-0. 10 years down the line nobody would remember what we did in the matches. The only thing remaining would be the scoreline.


"If you are not first, you might as well be last"

 

[Slog]

We've fought in sessions here and there but as always in Australia we can't perform consistently and decisively enough to force a result.

I think this is the best we've played and most competitive we've been overall in all the tours that have been made in our lifetimes Atleast (im sure neither one of us watched 95 tour)

1999 we were okayish but 2004 I don't think we even won a single session apart from the first day of first test at WACA. 2009 we were good in Sydney but hammered elsewhere

 

[AlphaFighter]

I think this is the best we've played and most competitive we've been overall in all the tours that have been made in our lifetimes Atleast (im sure neither one of us watched 95 tour)

1999 we were okayish but 2004 I don't think we even won a single session apart from the first day of first test at WACA. 2009 we were good in Sydney but hammered elsewhere

In 2004, we did well in the first day of the second test, also there were some good spells by Shoaib and Kaneria in the second test match, it was the batting in the second innings which cost us

 

[Fahdi]

As far as batting goes I agree to an extent. Azhar, Asad and to an extent Sarfraz have shown a lot of fight but the bowling display has been sorry to to say the least. The bowlers have barely shown to have a backbone much less a fight add to that their lack of skill and you can see why the tour has been a disaster.

 

[Arham_PakFan]

Th end result is what matters and we are 11-0 down here looking at a 12th consecutive defeat.This tour was a chance to win our first series in Australia in 2 decades.Australia had an unsettled team,fresh off a losing streak,and we played terribly against them.

4 consecutive whitewashes.

Yes,the 4th innings effort at the Gabba was commendable,but the way we lost the plot at the MCG in the fourth innings showed us that this team crumbles against pressure.They lost the unlosable test!The way our bowlers have flopped is disappointing,our batting,apart from a couple of exceptions has been nothing to write home about either.

We came here underprepared,got whipped in New Zealand,and got beaten fair and square here.We deserved to lose this tbh.We were way too complacent.Wrong squad selection also played a major factor.

 

[AlphaFighter]

As far as batting goes I agree to an extent. Azhar, Asad and to an extent Sarfraz have shown a lot of fight but the bowling display has been sorry to to say the least. The bowlers have barely shown to have a backbone much less a fight add to that their lack of skill and you can see why the tour has been a disaster.

Wahab i will say compared to Amir has bent his back and even picked up the odd wickets here and there, but that is his baseline.

Enough said about the over rated Amir, the better

 

[Markhor]

I think this is the best we've played and most competitive we've been overall in all the tours that have been made in our lifetimes Atleast (im sure neither one of us watched 95 tour)

1999 we were okayish but 2004 I don't think we even won a single session apart from the first day of first test at WACA. 2009 we were good in Sydney but hammered elsewhere

What's a common thread throughout these tours of Australia is how badly our bowlers have fared. You could understand our batsmen struggling due to the pace and bounce of the pitches but our bowlers get treated like innocuous trundlers more often than not.

In the 1980s we had our greatest ever Test side IMO under Imran and Javed, and the Australian team were going through a fairly lean era, and we still didn't win a single series ! 1995 was pretty horrific though we won a dead rubber.

In the 1999 series - but specifically the Hobart Test is a microcosm of our struggles in Australia. The moment we come in sight of a favourable result, we blow it. It was a fantastic partnership from Langer and Gilchrist but that Test sums the psychological barrier we seem to have against Australia - we don't seem to believe we can beat them on their turf.

That's despite us taking a squad that seemingly had all bases covered and a top bowling attack. Yet when we get there, we lose nearly every warm-up. Even a 50 year Dennis Lillee came out of retirement and played for an ACB Chairman XI and took 3-8

In 2004, we had no right to win that series as Australia were a far better team and our bowling attack was pretty weak. I think that was the series Mohammad Khalil featured in. But I hoped we'd compete far better than we did. We suffered terrible collapses in Melbourne and Sydney whilst at Perth we couldn't handle McGrath (who took 8-24 in the 2nd innings, I think [MENTION=132373]Convict[/MENTION] once said he was at that match).

In 2009-10, Australia had lost their aura of invincibility yet in 2 out of the 3 Tests they rolled us over. For all the hype about our 09-10 bowling attack from certain posters (you know who) - the fact is we got belted in every innings other than the first at Sydney where the SCG curators gifted us a fresh green track under the clouds. Australia declared in 4 out of their 6 innings in that series ! Of course, people conveniently omit that fact to suit their agendas about certain players.

 

[KB]

In the 1980s we had our greatest ever Test side IMO under Imran and Javed, and the Australian team were going through a fairly lean era, and we still didn't win a single series !

Although to be fair, Pakistan played them in 81-82, when Australia still had Greg Chappell and Dennis Lillee and were still a decent team. They then played them in 83-84, when Imran played only as a batsman as he could not bowl. With Qadir struggling, Sarfraz near end of his career, and the rest of the bowling attack quite anemic, Pakistan really struggled. Azeem Hafeez took the most wickets for Pakistan in the series - 19 - which were taken at 39 apiece.

That 83-84 series was the last series for Chappell and Lillee (and Rod Marsh) and after they had retired, Australia did go through a lean patch.

But the next time Pakistan toured was 1990, and by then Australia were well on the upward curve.

 

[msb314]

I think this is the best we've played and most competitive we've been overall in all the tours that have been made in our lifetimes Atleast (im sure neither one of us watched 95 tour)

1999 we were okayish but 2004 I don't think we even won a single session apart from the first day of first test at WACA. 2009 we were good in Sydney but hammered elsewhere

In 1999 - we were a hair's breadth away from winning the Hobart test before an epic Gilchrist/Langer partnership that won them the game.

We have had some close calls in Australia but always seem to fall just short.

 

[Gilly]

The third test: Australia put up some solid runs in their first innings however one expects that when the pitch was flatter then a Dubai runway and being in home conditions, they were expected to make a large score however on the second day we did fairly wel to try to restrict them to 538 and not 600 plus. The two seasoned veterans are out their now and putting up a solid fight and only time will tell.

They declared, Smith decided they had enough runs.

 

[saeedhk]

Fighting does not mean a thing. It is the end result that matters. Before Pakistan starts playing consistent cricket, the world will not take Pakistan team seriously.

 

[Pete Rose]

One poor sessions in Melbourne will hide the many positives of this tour

 

[JibranAnsari]

Apart from fourth innings in the first test , there has been no fight at all. I see lame surrenders.

 

[JibranAnsari]

One poor sessions in Melbourne will hide the many positives of this tour

How the young guns failed?
or our bowling completely failed?

Apart from azhar ali and the fourth innings in the first test match there has been really no positives from this series. One good innings can not hide all the negatives.