Play five dashers in the LOI line-ups

[Usman Chadda]

Experience is leading us nowhere. Grafters are leading us nowhere. It's time Pakistan became a poor man's England ODI team and pushes dashers/stroke-makers only from domestic cricket into the LOI teams. Don't care about the fans or their mood swings. Let them have fun. Just go out there and play your natural game, not worrying too much about your place or the result. We are getting thrashed time and time again with these lallu-panju experienced slow pokes or 'solid' players with strike-rate in the 70s even in domestic cricket.

Get the Mukhtar Ahmeds, Awais Zia's etc into the team. If you can be crazy enough to try Faheem Ashraf as an opener, you can be innovative enough to try this out. Babar and Sarfraz are two grafters that are good enough to hold one end if something goes wrong.

The point is to make yourself exciting to watch. We might lose 5-0 with this approach, but the new players will learn. The neutrals will tune into watch Pakistan play. We will be truly unpredictable then at least. Right now we are getting thrashed because we are so predictably bad.

Follow the McCullum way of thinking from now on. Thats the only way to shock this ridiculous batting culture out of the rut. We cannot do worse than what we are doing now seriously.

 

[Savak]

This is the formula

2 at the top, 2 in the middle order and 2 in the lower order. Max you can have are 2 solid proper batsmen with the guaranteed ability to accelerate big time at the death with ending SR of 100-120. Gone are the days of SR's of 70-80 e.t.c

 

[ads101]

The NZ batsmen are just better its not so much being a dasher or not. They play themselves in sooner and can accelerate by finding the gaps, clearing the circle and hard running better than ours can. Slogging ball one isnt the answer all you do is get out.

I think averages are probably more important we have too many who are sub par. Babar and Fakhar recently are the only ones scoring with consistency. If more of a batsmen can play themselves in (and not in the scratchy way of merely surviving that for example Hafeez has done of late) to the point they are comfortable to accelerate we’ll get better results. Part of that i think is they arent as weak to one type of bowling ie they get tied down to either pace or spin.

Play our best batsmen higher up, those with a stronger allround game against spin and pace. Babar, Haris, Fakhar all rightly are batting in the top four. Sarfraz is the best senior of the lot and should be batting at five. Another stable batsman in the top four would be good, think saad ali would do nicely who is doing well in domestic for a while now. Outside of the top five play your newer/ more one dimensional bats more as insurance in case things go wrong/to hit a bit if needed. Not up where they can stall/ not perform well. let your better batsmen at the top bat together with each other. And id make sure we play 7 proper bats. we have plenty of part time bowling options already and the longer the batting line up, the less pressure on top.

Obviously dont play batsmen incapable of accelerating like azhar, or guys who have a lot of trouble playing themselves in ( hafeez for example is having this problem and shouldnt be in the team and if he is certainly not top five).

I think we have a lot of options we dont need to recall guys like awais or open with fahim. We just arent properly testing out our best bats in domestic. And thats usually because we’re playing one too many senior or playing an extra bowler/all rounder we dont need. Id start with at least saad ali and talat getting tried both who have excellent domestic records.

 

[giri26]

New Zealand have a good balance, You cannot have 4-5 dashers in your X1, which will mean that more often than not you are going to find yourself 3-4 down against good attacks. New Zealand have Guptil and Munro, only Munro is out and out dasher, Guptil can play both ways. Then you have Williamson, who bats with a good SR but can also graft if needed. Same with Ross Taylor and Nicholls. So except for Munro and Grandhomme, none of the NZ batters are out and out dashers, they just have the ability to score quick when needed. Pakistan needs that balance, not someone who will slog and get out no matter what the situation is.

 

[Azeem Zafar]

The idea of 4-5 bashers can work in T20's but its not for ODI's. No one in their right mind would like to see a ODI batting line up of Mukhtar, Awais, Maqsood, Faheem, Akmal etc. Best teams in the world have balanced batting lineups with some accumulators & 2-3 quick scoring batsmen. We need a top 8 like this:

- Fakhar (Attacking Opener)
- Sahibzada/Sami (Strike Rotator, takes the charge after 1st wicket)
- Babar/Saad
- Haris/Saad
- Sarfaraz
- Talat/Maqsood
- Shadab/Hafeez
- Faheem/Imad
-

 

[khurram39]

in current team azhar ali didn't deserve any place, sarfraz need to push him up, at least these two changes need addressing on urgent basis.

a debate can be held on hafeez and shoaib's inclsuion.

 

[Usman Chadda]

New Zealand have a good balance, You cannot have 4-5 dashers in your X1, which will mean that more often than not you are going to find yourself 3-4 down against good attacks. New Zealand have Guptil and Munro, only Munro is out and out dasher, Guptil can play both ways. Then you have Williamson, who bats with a good SR but can also graft if needed. Same with Ross Taylor and Nicholls. So except for Munro and Grandhomme, none of the NZ batters are out and out dashers, they just have the ability to score quick when needed. Pakistan needs that balance, not someone who will slog and get out no matter what the situation is.

We don't have players of that caliber in domestic cricket, so we will have to do with 3-4 wickets down early. Atleast the score would be a lot more respectable than 32/8. Maybe in the future we will develop players who will be smart enough to be explosive yet solid according to the situation demands. But this nonsense culture of plodding along safely, yet throwing it away in the end, has got to end sometime.

Malik and Hafeez will get us nowhere. Just a little bit of pressure, and they start playing dot balls infinite. We already have Babar to do that. Sarfraz can work on his defence and become a bit more reliant. These two need to have explosive hitters around them to succeed.

 

[MMHS]

Won't work, even 11 won't work, if 11 dashers play while counting their average ..........

Someone needs to ask MoHa & Sarfraz what they were doing against Munro & Shantner between over # 38 to 45 on live telecast. Numbers are just a function of inflation - that 262 is equivalent to 162 at some past times - it was 15% less than par.