You are making alot of excuses when the reality is that Afghanistan has only beaten a full-strength Pakistan once in any format. If I need 50 excuses/modifiers to justify one point then it probably means that point isn't as strong as I think it is.
Theirs a difference between an excuse and arguing as to why a particular event happened. Afghanistan beating Pakistan is a recent event, the recent events include Pakistan losing to Afghanistan the last time they played and now getting out performed by them in this wc. Past events where you're going back to 2014 era isn't relevant.
You're right. No one believed Pakistan was No.1, and honestly they weren't. There were alot of B/C teams that Pakistan beat. But they were still a better and higher ranked team than Afghanistan going into the WC that had been winning matches more consistently than they had in years.
Again whats the relevance? Why is the past relevant? Isn't this am excuse? Afghanistan beat a full strength asia and A full strength pakistan, they beat 2023 England and nearly beat 2023 Australia while Pakistan have been getting butchered by all these teams left and right. So why does going in no 1 ranked pre WC have any relevance to 2024?
Need I remind you the original premise of you're argument Is Pakistan is STILL KEY WORD STILL THE 2ND BEST TEAM IN ASIA. So why are you arguing about the past? Aren't these coming up with 50+ narratives?
Also, the idea that England were awful because they had a bad WC is quite laughable. Again, the quality of players that England has are players that Afghanistan can only dream of having. In limited-overs cricket, confidence and momentum are a big thing. England in 2019 gave Afghanistan the thrashing of a lifetime when Morgan smashed Rashid alone for 10 sixes. The England squad from 2023 had many of the same players that won the WC 4 years prior. But England were overconfident and undercooked. But their performance in that WC was not a true reflection of how good they are. Side note: England were absolutely thrashed by Sri Lanka too in the same WC. Are we going to now pretend that Sri Lanka are better than England too?
Again going by player names and reputation is completely irrelevant. 2023 wc England was twrrible based of my previous reasoning. And yes 2023 wc sri lanka > England by miles. 2023 sri lanka even beat Pakistan. Pakistan came close to sri lanka in Asia cup and beat Sri Lanka in world cup because rizwan and Abdullah kicked off in both games, Rizwan who surprisingly clicked both times and Abdullah was a brand newbie who scored 52 in asia cup and 111 against them in wc. Without these 2 Sri lanka would have washed Pakistan left and right. The rest of the baggage was dead.
The only difference between Pakistan vs Sri lanka and England vs Sri lanka is that the only good inform batter they had which was Malan he didn't kick off in that game while Pakistan's 2 batters kicked off with rizwan playing a very very outlier innings, since he usually never gets such an absurdly high score in Odi's.
Any team can win one match. And consistently bottling and not bottling is what differentiates the best from the rest. If you can't handle pressure in this sport, you will lose most matches. Which is exactly why Afghanistan, despite their raw talent and incredible rise have constantly gotten reality checks from bigger teams. Be it Pakistan, Australia or India.
It aint one match, it's consistent losses to C team Nz, one loss to Afghanistan, utter thrashing by England, one loss to USA, one loss to India, Barely scraping by Canada and if you wish to go back to 2023, its losses to literally every team besides Nedtherlands amd Bangladesh, sri lanka required out of skin batting and Abdullah shafiq aka a newbie came through while NZ once again required a once in a generational innings from fakhar to get through.
Neither of Abdullah, Rizwan or Fakhar are kicking off qith the likes of mujeeb, Noor, Rashid, Farooqi bowling to them, Fakhar can bully sodhi and rizwan is surprisingly good against Sri Lanka but it won't happen against other opposition