r/PakCricket

welcome back to automod yapshow, if hasan nawaz was a jew in nazi germany and babar azam was a nazi aristocrat even the nazis would have enough sense to select hasan nawaz as their number 4, idk what more this guy can even do to prove he should be playing for pakistan, he carries a battered broken batting lineup and his death batting is immense, all pakistan coaches have to do is select him and tell him to stop starting slow, thats genuinely about it

Zero auction strategy, terrible foreign picks, lack of solid middle order, Mediocre captaincy are reasons LQ is in a mess and these things I understand.

But what I can never understand and forgive is decisions that are being taken solely because of loyalties, friendships, family and seniority reasons. You are running a team as its your galli/muhalla team and playing with fan's emotions who are also a major reason of your success.

First you spent nearly 8 crore for Haris Rauf and compromised a solid middle order pick. You repeatedly give him overs in the PP and death knowing pretty well based on his huge sample size how terrible he is. Zaman Khan hid some of his flaws in our title winning seasons too. Now you are hell bent on playing 4 fast bowlers and compromising the team balance at the expense of a proper wrist spinner. 3 matches were enough to know that we need to drop the weakest of the 4 bowlers for Usama Mir. Heck in Karachi leg, I would even bring Wellalage for someone like Burl or Asif Ali. But again they went with 4 bowlers.

They have a data analyst and an entire team of local coaches and yet they are compromising the balance of the team. I can tell you right now that if we keep persisting with this strategy of playing 4 fast bowlers, we wont make the play-offs. Even on Lahore pitches, this wont work as more and more matches are played on those 4 pitches and cracks begin to open up.

My humble suggestion to Sameen Rana to set his loyalties aside and kindly drop Haris Rauf for Usama Mir and Burl for Wellalage. Use Fizz, Mir, Sikandar and Wellalage to apply the choke in the middle.

I recently came across highlights of an old match where Shahid Afridi scored 76 runs when Pakistan were 40–5 after 20 overs, and then went on to take 7 wickets. That’s still the most wickets by a Pakistani in an ODI and the second-best bowling figures overall in ODIs.

My earliest memories of cricket are from the 2014 Asia Cup, when I was about six years old. I remember Afridi hitting those two famous sixes off Ashwin in the last over against India, and then later scoring 60 off 25 balls to rescue Pakistan against Bangladesh.

This made me curious about how people who watched Afridi throughout his career viewed him at the time. I know he was a huge star and a major crowd-puller, maybe even bigger than Babar Azam is today. But when you look at his stats, his batting seems very inconsistent. His strike rate was excellent, but his average is quite mediocre, and he also holds the record for the most ducks in international cricket. On the other hand, his bowling record is very good.

I understand that he was the classic “on his day” player and an entertainer, but what was the general consensus about him back then? Was the reaction similar to how people treat Babar now when he goes through a poor run of form?