Pakistan's T20 philosophy and personnel need an overhaul

[Anis Shivani]

I would like to propose an overhaul of Pakistan’s T20 philosophy, and suggest something along the lines of the following team after the World Cup.

I haven’t watched the national T20 tournament this year as closely as I would have liked to, so these players are just suggestions, but I think we have plenty of options among younger, aggressive batsmen who play the T20 format the way it’s supposed to.

Not all of these will work out. In fact, most won’t, that’s just the nature of international competition. But what we’re doing now relies on individual superhero performances, and goes against the grain of the T20 spirit. Rizwan once again, in the most recent win, scored just 88 runs in 11 overs. Extrapolate that to the entire 20 overs and you don’t have enough runs on the board, especially because you’re putting immediate pressure on the latecomers to come and make up for the deficiency.

Also, changing the personnel will do no good until the philosophy is returned to where it used to be, so you need to remove Babar from the captaincy. I feel like Saqlain is a secondary problem because he is clearly a rubber-stamp coach, and at some level he has to know that the philosophy is flawed. But who knows, he needs to go too.

T20 is a game of exchangeable parts and defined roles and predictability. So here are some new parts. The core is already there, and the fast bowling is exceptional, but we are currently underperforming in T20s so it needs to be fixed. Notice how this kind of lineup also addresses Pakistan’s similar issues in ODIs after Mickey Arthur left, and to a lesser extent in tests as well. A number of these players slot right into the ODI team as well.

Saim Ayub / Sahibzada Farhan

Haider Ali

Babar Azam (should not open)

Kamran Ghulam / Tayyab Tahir

Omair bin Yousuf / Saud Shakeel (see if they can up their game for T20s)

Mohammad Rizwan / Haris (rest Rizwan often)

Shadab Khan

Qasim Akram / Mohammad Nawaz

Waseem Jr. / fast-bowling all-rounder (there are several promising ones in the national T20 competition, but I didn’t follow enough to pick one or two)

Haris Rauf

Naseem Shah / SSA / Dahani / Hasnain (depending on situation, and rest SSA often)

Reserves:

Asif Ali (give him more balls to play)

Sharjeel Khan (mentioned with great reluctance)

Shan Masood (not a long-term T20 option)

 

[KingOfPakBreakfast]

I think the key is in being truly flexible with the batting order. Pakistan rigidly stick to the top two. That’s fine when you’re chasing, because you have a target to work towards. However, you can easily demote Rizwan when setting a target. Introduce Rizzy only if you need to shore up an innings after a sudden fall of wickets. Otherwise it should be Babar + hitter at all times. Babar bats through and gets better as he goes along. Go hard, knowing that Rizzy and Shadab will shore u up. You can’t have a fear of failure of the middle order when batting first. You just hamstring yourself this way if u do.

 

[Savak]

Pakistan needs to move in the direction of having a seperate limited overs coach ie ODI and T20 and having a seperate test coaching set up.

Such an approach has done wonders for England and Australia.

 

[PakLFC]

Babar and Rizwan often give us a decent to good start. It is number 3 and 4 that coz so much trouble completely slowing down the run rate.

 

[Suleiman]

The hard truth is that Pakistan does not produce batsmen that are able to shift gears seamlessly. They are either in the category of pure power hitting and general pro risk batting with an inability to play any risk free cricket at all OR they get way too comfy playing risk free cricket and put an insane value on their wicket, so much so that it is limiting them from ever taking any risks even when the situation demands it.

I mean last game you could count about 5-6 full tosses around the 15th over and beyond, served on a silver platter to Rizwan who had been batting throughout the whole innings as well as Shan, and they failed to put away any of them.

Before someone comes crying to me about being a hater, don’t you dare. I’ve been supporting both Shan and Rizwan since 2016, go ahead and check my posting history if you don’t believe me.

Babar and Rizwan you can argue are well rounded batsmen, but we’ve seen that when push comes to shove they do fall into the latter category.

So any batting order we put out has to take this into consideration. If we want to apply philosophies, they should be applied at the foundational years of a batsman at domestic and grass roots level.

 

[daytrader]

No need for drastic changes like that, we have a stable team consistently being ranked in the top 4 after 200 T20Is. We have most of the components needed for a top team: world class openers, a quality bowling attack, a great power hitter in Asif Ali, spin bowling all rounders that add great balance to the side, a smart wicket keeper, young fielders. Basically a team we can build upon. Just missing a solid middle order bat, a fast bowling all rounder and another dependable power hitter.

 

[Anis Shivani]

Pakistan needs to move in the direction of having a seperate limited overs coach ie ODI and T20 and having a seperate test coaching set up.

Such an approach has done wonders for England and Australia.

I agree completely. There should be a separate limited overs coach, I think it's been obvious since Mickey Arthur left. That would force some clarity.

 

[Anis Shivani]

I think the key is in being truly flexible with the batting order. Pakistan rigidly stick to the top two. That’s fine when you’re chasing, because you have a target to work towards. However, you can easily demote Rizwan when setting a target. Introduce Rizzy only if you need to shore up an innings after a sudden fall of wickets. Otherwise it should be Babar + hitter at all times. Babar bats through and gets better as he goes along. Go hard, knowing that Rizzy and Shadab will shore u up. You can’t have a fear of failure of the middle order when batting first. You just hamstring yourself this way if u do.

I agree that we need this flexibility, it's T20 after all. But I don't think that Babar is capable of this kind of flexibility, him and Rizwan have boxed themselves into a mental situation where they think they are indispensable as openers, both of them, and they are the only ones who can save the team. We will see going forward, especially in Australia where such situations will arise, if they can show this flexibility, but I don't think they can. That's where an independent, powerful coach comes in, to challenge the rigidity.

 

[Anis Shivani]

No need for drastic changes like that, we have a stable team consistently being ranked in the top 4 after 200 T20Is. We have most of the components needed for a top team: world class openers, a quality bowling attack, a great power hitter in Asif Ali, spin bowling all rounders that add great balance to the side, a smart wicket keeper, young fielders. Basically a team we can build upon. Just missing a solid middle order bat, a fast bowling all rounder and another dependable power hitter.

I do admit the strengths of the team, the bowling, both fast and spin, especially, most of the bases are covered. A series like England would have been ideal however to experiment with a lot of moving parts to fill in the remaining gaps in terms of acceleration and hitting which prevent them from going all the way. I think we have the core components in place to consistently challenge for the no. 1 spot in T20, so I think the team is underperforming at the moment to a certain extent. It wouldn't be a drastic change in the end, but by experimenting a lot now (or actually it should have been in the last year) we could have addressed the remaining needs.

 

[Anis Shivani]

The hard truth is that Pakistan does not produce batsmen that are able to shift gears seamlessly. They are either in the category of pure power hitting and general pro risk batting with an inability to play any risk free cricket at all OR they get way too comfy playing risk free cricket and put an insane value on their wicket, so much so that it is limiting them from ever taking any risks even when the situation demands it.

I mean last game you could count about 5-6 full tosses around the 15th over and beyond, served on a silver platter to Rizwan who had been batting throughout the whole innings as well as Shan, and they failed to put away any of them.

Before someone comes crying to me about being a hater, don’t you dare. I’ve been supporting both Shan and Rizwan since 2016, go ahead and check my posting history if you don’t believe me.

Babar and Rizwan you can argue are well rounded batsmen, but we’ve seen that when push comes to shove they do fall into the latter category.

So any batting order we put out has to take this into consideration. If we want to apply philosophies, they should be applied at the foundational years of a batsman at domestic and grass roots level.

Where is the improvisational batting a la ABD that you need in this format? Who are the young players who show such talent? Encourage and support such risk-taking instead of going for the safe approach.

 

[Vorador]

Y'all need to make your peace with the fact that we're not going to win anything big for the foreseeable future. We don't have endless reserves of talent. I don't think that any amount of changes will fix our problems given the current state of affairs.

An embarrassing world cup campaign might prove to be more beneficial for us in the long run. But the good thing is that we're a better LOI team than we were 5-7 years ago and that's still progress.

Pakistan will never move out of its template of T20 cricket. It's different than what everyone else is doing and it's certainly not ideal but I doubt we can play the brand of cricket other teams are playing given the resources we have.

More than half the upcoming domestic players we're banking on to herald us into the next era of cricket will turn out to be total international failures. Our domestic cricket standards are just bad.

 

[Ami]

Commendable.
Dont think they're capable.
Been trying players for years and years...
New faces. Same result.

 

[Anis Shivani]

It's instructive to look at the 2017, 2018, and 2019 scorecards to see what was happening in T20i for Pakistan before we went off the rails. I did look into those scorecards to see what we were forgetting.
Peak Mickey/Sarfraz had the right approach and were overperforming because of well-defined player roles.
I agree that later period Mickey/Sarfraz started to decline, but what we needed at that point was an upgrade in personnel. Instead Misbah brought in terrible players and changed the whole approach which we're still persisting with.
Hafeez for example had an interesting well-defined role in the 2018/2019 team.
We now have better fast bowlers, and ought to do better, but the philosophy is all wrong.
It will take a World Cup disaster, plus another year after that of remaining in denial, and then the responsible people will get fired.
At least try the right philosophy and try to locate the domestic talent to fit proper T20 roles.
I hate to say it but on present performance unfit Azam Khan and Sharjeel Khan belong in the team. But it will do no good because you can't fit players like that in a philosophy that's all wrong and expect results.

 

[Kroll]

Boot out Iftikhar, Khushdil and Asif for a start, embarrassing having this level of mediocrity in the team.

 

[boomboom6]

Given the limited resources available, they can start by bringing in players who do have the skillset.

Sharjeel Khan for starters is a must until another replacement can be found. Asif Ali should be promoted to #4, 3 based on game situation. It's time to think outside the box to make the most of what we have available i.e. greater than the sum of our parts.

But it won't happen.

 

[Anis Shivani]

Told you so.
There are posters here who actually believed SSA would be fit and ready to go for the World Cup.
Babar should not be captain.
The entire approach is defensive and wrong.
Based on the performances of the last two month, I would tinker with the lineup I suggested in the original post. But specific personnel is not the issue, it's going back to the right T20 mindset.
Happy to say that I haven't watched a minute yet of this World Cup.
I'll probably check out of watching test matches too given what I'm seeing of the level of intelligence of modern Pakistani cricketers.