And so it begins. The Mamoon 6-step troll technique regarding a promising Pakistani cricketer:
1) Back the player in question, boasting about your alleged ability to spot talent.
2) Hype the player up more as he inevitably performs because he is a quality player.
3) When the player in question starts receiving plaudits from everywhere, start criticizing him but being careful not to overdo it.
4) After a couple of failures, intensify the criticism while positioning yourself as a fan who's disappointed.
5) Label the player useless and vehemently criticize him in every thread possible.
6) Brush off any good showings as flukes, "lacking impact" or "lacking heart" or "lacking swing". Anything to bypass actual stats that prove that reality is in on the contrary to your views.
Babar is currently somewhere between stage 3 and 4 while poor Amir is on stage 5. Junaid "better than Amir" is at stage 6.
That is unfortunately what happens to most of our promising players. They start with a bang but then they slowly fade away because their weaknesses are not addressed at the right time while blind fan-boys like you keep defending them, pretending that everything is okay when it is not.
The whole world knows that Junaid is done and dusted now, but you like to live in a parallel world where he is still a world class talent. Secondly, I didn't say he is better than Amir; I said he looks to be in the same class, and that was true for a brief period but unfortunately, it turned out to be a fluke. In addition, the whole world knows that Ajmal's action had deteriorated beyond repair, but you had to defend him till the end and when he got suspended, you sprinted away for three weeks because you didn't have the guts to defend your position of labeling him a legal bowler. Everyone saw how brutally Yasir got exposed in Australia, and he almost always struggles when the batsmen take him on, but you continue to pretend that everything is okay and he is the perfect Test spinner. These are just a few examples, I can go on and on and on.
As far as Babar is concerned, there is no doubt that he is a brilliant batsman, but there is also no doubt that he needs to improve his power game. You got triggered because I mentioned your man-crush Amla, but there are actually a lot of similarities between the two as far as ODI batting is concerned. Very good strike rotation and ability to maintain a healthy SR, but when it comes to accelerating, they don't last 10 deliveries. Now don't give me the predictable rubbish that it is not their job to slog, the point is that a complete Limited Overs batsmen like Kohli, de Villiers (minus the choke gene), Smith and Root have the ability to do both.
Simply hiding behind Babar's stats and pretending that everything is okay with his approach is what you call burying your head in the ground, but then again, you have never really understood the game which is why you think Amla is the second best ODI opener of all time, Duminy and Miller are better hitters than de Villiers, Kapil and Botham are not ATGs, Younis is as good as Tendulkar in Tests and Moeen Ali is better than Ben Stokes etc.
Babar scored heaps of runs in Australia but his runs couldn't win a single match for us, even though Sharjeel set up him almost every single time. This is an area where he needs to improve; the aspect of his batting where he can bat at a SR of 150+ for few overs without throwing his wicket away. In other words, he needs to add an extra gear.
Nonetheless, I am banging my head against a wall here. You can continue to live your parallel universe where Pakistan is a world class team in all formats and almost all of their players are better than their Indian counterparts, and things will only get better from here and we have nothing to worry about. You have the talent of deluding yourself that everything is okay when everything around you is falling apart. It is a good trait to have if you want to be happy all the time, but that doesn't really address the problems and the issues. You can either sprint away from your problems and pretend everything is okay, or you can acknowledge those problems and discuss them.
I prefer the latter, but you, as this illustration shows....
prefer the former.
[MENTION=135196]waleed88[/MENTION]
for Hafeez, I don't know what level of difficulty will be in CT for him!
