Was a total of 119 runs enough?

There’s not much I can say about last evening’s performance by the Pakistan batsmen. People keep suggesting that keeping in mind our bowling attack a total of 119 may have been enough had Shahid Afridi bowled with his customary miserliness. It shows that people at home are so used to the Pakistan team’s batting collapses and super human bowling efforts that for them even a total of 119 runs was defendable. Well, not every day, my dear.

I don’t think its fair to blame Afridi’s going for 23 off just 2 overs for Pakistan’s loss. The credit for the loss goes to the South African bowlers and spineless batting by the Pakistani batsmen. The South African bowlers were able to restrict our batsmen to 6 runs or less in 12 of the 20 overs. The last 10 overs saw only 42 runs being scored for the loss of 6 wickets. Between the 11^th and the 17^th overs our batsmen could only manage 20 runs and lost 4 wickets in consecutive overs with one of them being a maiden. That has to be labeled as excellent bowling no matter how low an opinion we may have of our batsmen.

In fact, a total of even 119 runs was made possible because Imran Farhat came on strike after the first ball in the first over. Had Shahzaib Hassan, a right hander, been on strike the wide deliveries that Albie Morkel bowled would have landed in what Geoff Boycott is fond of calling the “corridor of uncertainty”. However, his line was all wrong for Farhat who stroked two of them to the fence and four of them were down the leg and were rightly called wides. 14 came off the first over and add to this the no balls bowled by the other brother, Morne Morkel, and you have an inflated total – what would you say to a total of less than a hundred?

Despite Shoaib Akhtar’s heroics early on and some tight bowling by Saeed Ajmal and Umar Gul, in South Africa’s chase, their batsmen were under no great pressure because the required total was so meager. Yes, had the Pakistani batsmen scored around 30 odd more runs then we might have had a cracker of a match.

So, forget match fixing and team controversies and acknowledge that the South African bowlers were able to get on top of our batsmen. I do believe that our team will bounce back strongly… if not in today’s match then in later matches.

Please let me have your comments either way.