Pakistan needs to strengthen our bowling!

[gazza619]

How many times have we seen Pakistan failing to make a substantial score in limited overs cricket. Enough is enough. We must simply accept the fact that 8 times out of 10 we will make an average score against a decent opposition.

The strategy of extra batter or so called specialist batters is really not working. Pakistan is lucky so have many half decent allrounder options in Nawaz, Shadab, Imad, Iftikhar and now the newbie Jamal. We should pick all of them in the XI. Just imagine if Imad and / or Jamal were playing as the 6th and 7th bowler, England would have surely be restricted to 180 odd which would have given Pakistan a half decent chance of chasing. I say for the World T20 we should strengthen that bowling attack.

One thing is for sure. Pakistan has more bowling options on the bench then batting options.

 

[Rana]

Ah yes

Another way to deflect the lethargic batting approach

We need bowlers who can restrict teams to scores below 160 every match and on every ground in the world!

Only then it would make sense to have 3 Test cricketers in our top 3 for T20!

 

[TheSultan]

Our bowlers won us two matches out of nowhere when our pathetic batting approach gave them very little to work with.

The only real weak links were Dahani and Wasim. And most likely they will not be first choices anyway.

 

[Mamoon]

Cricket matches are won by batsmen. It doesn’t matter what the format is. It is a big myth that bowlers win you games, they don’t.

When you put enough runs on the board, even a middling bowling attack will look good.

If your batsmen are regularly scoring 400+ in Tests, 300+ in ODIs and 180+ in T20Is, you will win a lot of games. However, if they are not putting up the runs, you will not win many games even if you have a bowling attack of Marshall, McGrath, Warne, Imran and Wasim.

Pakistan has hyped up its bowling throughout the course of history and romanticized fast bowling. There have been periods where Pakistan’s bowling has been the envy of the world, but Pakistan has never had a period in its history where it was the undisputed best team in the world at least for a prolonged period of team or consistently played like a world class side, and that is Pakistan has always struggled to put together a world class batting lineup.

From 70s to 2020s, you will not find a single batting lineup where Pakistan has fielded 3-4 top batsmen together. Usually you would find 1-2 world class batsmen surrounded by several average players, or even periods where you won’t find a single elite batsman in the lineup.

If you have a series between a side that has a world class batting lineup but an attack of trundlers and a side with world class bowlers but mediocre batsmen, the team with the world class batting lineup will always win over the course of a series irrespective of the format.

Pakistan has the wrong priorities. Always has. This passion for bowling has ruined Pakistan cricket’s culture.

 

[Mamoon]

England won the series not because it had better bowling but because it had much better batting. You swap the bowling lineups and England still wins.

 

[PakPremi]

Agree with both posts from Mamoon, except that bowling still has to be good enough to defend even high scores otherwise opposition will also make merrry. If theteam os packed with world class oreven top class batsmen then thereis a moreof a chance that someone from top 6 will win you the match, or team wins with combined efforts of 2 or 3 batsmen. Pakistan tragedy is in every era we always relied on one or two great batsmen and as Mamoon said with not much top class support.

 

[Markhor]

From 70s to 2020s, you will not find a single batting lineup where Pakistan has fielded 3-4 top batsmen together. Usually you would find 1-2 world class batsmen surrounded by several average players, or even periods where you won’t find a single elite batsman in the lineup.

The only time I recall us having 3 world-class batsmen together was that brief spell in 2005/06 under Bob Woolmer when we had Younis, Yousuf and Inzamam.

Unfortunately we played musical chairs with the openers and were almost always 30 or 40-2 in that era.

 

[TheSultan]

Cricket matches are won by batsmen. It doesn’t matter what the format is. It is a big myth that bowlers win you games, they don’t.

When you put enough runs on the board, even a middling bowling attack will look good.

If your batsmen are regularly scoring 400+ in Tests, 300+ in ODIs and 180+ in T20Is, you will win a lot of games. However, if they are not putting up the runs, you will not win many games even if you have a bowling attack of Marshall, McGrath, Warne, Imran and Wasim.

Pakistan has hyped up its bowling throughout the course of history and romanticized fast bowling. There have been periods where Pakistan’s bowling has been the envy of the world, but Pakistan has never had a period in its history where it was the undisputed best team in the world at least for a prolonged period of team or consistently played like a world class side, and that is Pakistan has always struggled to put together a world class batting lineup.

From 70s to 2020s, you will not find a single batting lineup where Pakistan has fielded 3-4 top batsmen together. Usually you would find 1-2 world class batsmen surrounded by several average players, or even periods where you won’t find a single elite batsman in the lineup.

If you have a series between a side that has a world class batting lineup but an attack of trundlers and a side with world class bowlers but mediocre batsmen, the team with the world class batting lineup will always win over the course of a series irrespective of the format.

Pakistan has the wrong priorities. Always has. This passion for bowling has ruined Pakistan cricket’s culture.

I think a lot of inaccurate statements there. Pakistan in the 90s had a great side, they didn’t let themselves down because they didn’t have the personnel - it was their infighting and match fixing.

The bowling attack doesn’t need any explanation, but the batting we had Miandad, Malik, Inzi, Basit Ali in the early 90s. Saeed, Amir, Inzi, Malik and upcoming yousuf in the mid to late 90s.

That was a great bunch of players.

The other thing is that Bowling does win you matches provided you have an adequate if not great batting line up.

It doesn’t work the other way. You can’t have a great batting line up and an adequate bowling line up to win matches.

The balance changes a bit in T20s due to the nature of the game, but bowling is still very important and can be matchwinning.

 

[Saj]

The 5 front line bowlers for Pakistan are fine:

Shaheen
Haris
Naseem
Nawaz
Shadab

The problem is if one of these guys get injured and you have to call up one of the back up bowlers.

 

[Ami]

Whatever Pakistan has won, ever since 82-83 India series as a wee kid...it has always been the bowling that has won them the matches.

I'm not convinced that better batting would have meant MORE wins..look at India for example, in the same period, they only kicked on recently in world class terms when their bowlers eventually joined the party.

Historically, Windies of 70s/80s and the Aussies to follow you really need to go BIG in both depts to be classed as world class.

I would say, without the backing of any stats, bowling will probably give you more wins than batting.

 

[Fenrir]

England won the series not because it had better bowling but because it had much better batting. You swap the bowling lineups and England still wins.

The great West Indies bowling attack won them many matches.They used to blow away teams but it is rare to have four or five exceptional bowlers in the team.Australia also won many matches because of Thomson and Lilee.

 

[Mp812]

The great West Indies bowling attack won them many matches.They used to blow away teams but it is rare to have four or five exceptional bowlers in the team.Australia also won many matches because of Thomson and Lilee.

Wrong i guess. WI had fearsome batting lineup as well - richards ,haynes,greenidge, llyod etc in 80s when they won a lot. In late 90s when reduced to just lara, chanderapul and sarawan...they lost lot more than they won

 

[adzzy786]

The great West Indies bowling attack won them many matches.They used to blow away teams but it is rare to have four or five exceptional bowlers in the team.Australia also won many matches because of Thomson and Lilee.

They also had good batting.

Even if you had ATG bowling attack it doesn’t matter if you can’t score runs. Especially if your batting line up is made of 2 batsmen and 9 tailenders

 

[Anis Shivani]

Cricket matches are won by batsmen. It doesn’t matter what the format is. It is a big myth that bowlers win you games, they don’t.

When you put enough runs on the board, even a middling bowling attack will look good.

If your batsmen are regularly scoring 400+ in Tests, 300+ in ODIs and 180+ in T20Is, you will win a lot of games. However, if they are not putting up the runs, you will not win many games even if you have a bowling attack of Marshall, McGrath, Warne, Imran and Wasim.

Pakistan has hyped up its bowling throughout the course of history and romanticized fast bowling. There have been periods where Pakistan’s bowling has been the envy of the world, but Pakistan has never had a period in its history where it was the undisputed best team in the world at least for a prolonged period of team or consistently played like a world class side, and that is Pakistan has always struggled to put together a world class batting lineup.

From 70s to 2020s, you will not find a single batting lineup where Pakistan has fielded 3-4 top batsmen together. Usually you would find 1-2 world class batsmen surrounded by several average players, or even periods where you won’t find a single elite batsman in the lineup.

If you have a series between a side that has a world class batting lineup but an attack of trundlers and a side with world class bowlers but mediocre batsmen, the team with the world class batting lineup will always win over the course of a series irrespective of the format.

Pakistan has the wrong priorities. Always has. This passion for bowling has ruined Pakistan cricket’s culture.

Incorrect statement about the seventies. Majid, Zaheer, Miandad, Mushtaq, Asif Iqbal, all world-class, all in the team at the same time. Not to mention others like Imran who could seriously contribute. All in one team. What they lacked then was one tear-away fast bowler.