The Pakistan cricket team’s dismal performance in the T20 World Cup 2024 has saddened fans far and wide. Equally upset are the well-wishers such as Wasim Akram who has expressed his resentment over the way the team played against the USA and India. Akram, who wore the crown of champion fast bowler in the 1990’s, demands wholesale changes to the team. He says the whole team should be changed as it doesn’t deserve to play at this level. “Pakistani players think that if they don’t perform well, the coaches will be sacked, and nothing will happen to them. It is time to keep the coaches and change the entire team,” Akram told a sports channel after Pakistan’s surrender against arch-rival India at New York’s Nassau County International Cricket Stadium. The former captain slated the batsmen for “failing to read conditions and losing wickets while playing unnecessary shots.” 

He said Iftikhar Ahmed had been part of the team for years but didn’t know how to bat. “I can’t go and tell about the game awareness to Fakhar Zaman,” he said.  As for Rizwan, he said the batsman should have played Jasprit Bumrah’s over with a great deal of caution as he was brought back to take wickets for his team. “They have been playing cricket for 10 years, and I can’t teach them. Rizwan has no game awareness,” Akram blasted. He also dropped a hint about frosty relations between captain Babar Azam and pacer Shaheen Afridi, saying “players are not on speaking terms.” Azhar Mahmood, however, denies it and claims that the two players are on good terms. “Enough is enough,” remarked Akram who said he, as a Pakistani, felt humiliated as the team let the nation down.

Awakening from a deep slumber after suffering two consecutive losses to the cricket teams of the US and India, PCB Chairman Mohsin Naqvi emerged on Sunday with insights that should have been evident prior to the commencement of the extended version of the Twenty20 World Cup. Unsurprisingly, Naqvi asserted that he understood “what was going on in the team” and “the reasons behind the loss to arch-rivals India”. However, this realisation dawned only after Pakistan endured a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Indian side. “The defeat against India was disappointing in every sense,” said Naqvi, who also holds the all-important portfolio for Interior Ministry, during media interaction with journalists at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York. Naqvi emphasised that this poor performance clearly indicated the necessity for a "major surgery". He said the Pakistani nation would soon witness a major overhaul.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan